
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



DARWIN AND THE 
HUMANITIES 



OTHER WORKS 

by 

JAMES MARK BALDWIN 

Ph.D. (Princeton), Hon. D.Sc. (Oxford, Geneva), LL.D. (Glasgow, South Caro- 
lina). Vice-President (1910) Institut International de Sociologie. Presi- 
dent (1909-13) International Congress of Psychology. Member Aris- 
totelian and Sociological Societies of London, &c. Laureate 
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. Lately Professor in 
Princeton University and in the Johns Hopkins 
University. Editor of the Psychological Review. 



Handbook of Psychology. 2 Vols. Holt & Co., New- 
York. 
Elements of Psychology. Same Publishers. Translated 

into Spanish. 
Mental Development in the Child and the Race. 

3d ed. New York and London, Macmillan. Translated 

into French and German. 
Social and Ethical Interpretations. 4th ed. Same 

publishers. Translated into French, German and Spanish. 
Development and Evolution. Same publishers. 
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 3 vols, in 

4 parts. Same publishers. 
Story of the Mind. (Popular). New York, Appleton; 

London, Newnes; also Hodder& StoUghton ("The Mind"). 

Translated into Italian and Spanish. 
Fragments in Philosophy and Science. Collected Essays. 

New York, Scribner; London, Nimmo. 
Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic. Vols. I and II 

(vol. Ill in preparation). London, Sonnenschein; New 

York, Macmillan. In course of translation into French, 

German and Spanish. 



Psychological Review Publications 



LIBRARY OF GENETIC SCIENCE AND 
PHILOSOPHY. VOL. II 



DARWIN AND THE 
HUMANITIES 



BY 
JAMES MARK BALDWIN 



REVIEW PUBLISHING CO. 

BALTIMORE 

1909 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, 

BY THE 

REVIEW PUBLISHING CO. 



All rights reserved. 



PRINTED BY 

WILLIAMS & WILK1NS COMPANY 

BALTIMORE 



©CU 2-53648 



To 
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

whose Interest, like that 
of his co-worker Dar- 
win, extends to all 
the Humanities 



PREFACE 

This booklet had its origin in a paper on ' The Influence of 
Darwin on the Mental and Moral Sciences,' prepared by 
request for the Darwin Celebration of the American Philosoph- 
ical Society, April 23, 1909. The paper was not presented 
at the meeting on account of my necessary absence from 
the country. Being greatly interested in the subject, how- 
ever, I revised the manuscript on a larger scale, still adhering 
strictly to the original topic, with the result here set down. 
The book is still no more than an outline or sketch; but I have 
endeavored to make the successive points plain; and 
possibly the whole may be found clearer and more effective 
from its brief and succinct mode of presentation. 

The subject is very attractive; its treatment should also 
prove useful. The numerous celebrations which the double 
anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the publication of 
the Origin of Species has inspired, have resulted in many 
statements of Darwin's influence in the Biological Sciences. 1 

1 Of recent publications the following are due to the occasion 
of this dual anniversary: Fifty Years of Darwinism, by several 
authors, papers prepared for the celebration of the Amer. Assn. 
for the Adv. of Science, New York, Holt, 1909; Darwinism and 
Modern Science, a collection of papers prepared by Cambridge 
University, the University Press, 1909; Linncean Society of 
London, Darwin-Wallace Celebration, July 1, 1908; Proceedings of 
the Celebration of the Amer. Philosoph. Society, April 23, 1909; 
The Psychological Review, Darwin Number, devoted to Darwin's 
influence on the Humanities, May, 1909, Review Pub. Co., Balti- 
more, Poulton 'The Centenary of Darwin,' Quarterly Review, July, 
1909, and Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species, addresses, etc., 
Longmans, 1909. Less expert readers may be referred to the follow- 



VI 11 PREFACE 

It is natural that this should be the point of emphasis. Yet 
much repetition and some controversy have resulted; while the 
corresponding influence of Darwin and the growth of Dar- 
winism, in the sciences of Mind, the Humanities broadly 
defined, have been but scantily traced out and recorded. Nat- 
uralists are not aware of the extent of it. Personally I find 
it necessary as never before, to call myself a ' Darwinian' 
simply from having written out in this little volume the 
relationships of the several branches of humanistic study, 
as I apprehend them, from the point of view of Dar- 
winism. 

Many things seem to be covered from this point of view as 
from no other. My favorite doctrines, and those in which my 
larger books have been in some measure original, seem now, 
when woven together, to have been consciously inspired by the 
theory of Natural Selection: I need only mention 'Organic 
Selection,' 'Functional Selection,' 'Social Heredity,' 'Selective 
Thinking,' 'Experimental Logic,' thoroughgoing 'Naturalism 
of Method,' etc. Such views as these all illustrate or extend 
the principle of selection as Darwin conceived it — that is, 
the principle of survival from varied cases — as over against 
any vitalistic or formal principle. Wherever I have found it 

ing works expounding Darwinism in relation to other points of 
view, especially in biology: Conn, The Method of Evolution; Headley, 
Problems of Evolution; Plate, Selektionsprinzip; Kellogg, Darwinism 
Today; Poulton, Essays on Evolution, and Charles Darwin and the 
Theory of Natural Selection; Delage, Heredite et les grandes Problemes 
de Biologie gen4rale, followed by the annual issues of the Annee 
Biologique; Hasckel, General Morphology; Baldwin, Development and 
Evolution; Gulick, Evolution, Racial and Habitudinal; Brooks, The 
Foundations of Zoology; Metcalf , Organic Evolution. An interesting 
historical book is Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin. For topical 
articles, with literary references, by several hands, see the writer's 
Diet, of Philosophy. Original works, which have become classical, as 
well as more special discussions, are cited in the text. 



PREFACE • IX 

necessary to go beyond the ' Selection' principle, thus defined, 
it has been by interpretations, such as that of the theory of 
' Genetic Modes,' which do not controvert or deny the univer- 
sality of this principle, but explicitly recognize and utilize it. I 
am not a philosophical Dualist or Positivist; but in the 
domain of science I accept both these points of view. And I 
further hold that our philosophy must preserve and utilize 
the great results of scientific thought without subtracting 
one jot or tittle from their full and legitimate force. So, 
to make this confession complete — as far as may be without 
abusing the liberty allowed in a Preface — I must admit that 
the result of my labors for twenty-five years, the net 
result, that is, of my scientific work until now, is a contribu- 
tion, whatever it may turn out to be worth, to the theory of 
Darwinism in the sciences of life and mind. I call it a 
'confession,' but 'claim' would be a better word; for who 
would not consider it an honor to be allowed to 'claim' that 
he had done something to carry Darwin's great and illumi- 
nating conception into those fields of more general philo- 
sophical interest, in which in the end its value for human 
thought must be estimated ? Of course from such a partial 
survey as that which is here attempted, one cannot reach 
more than a suggestion of what such a final estimate is to be; 
but one can anticipate something of the character of 
the verdict. I think the conclusion drawn on page 87 of this 
volume, to the effect that natural selection is in principle the 
universal law of genetic organization and progress in nature — 
human nature no less than physical nature — is that to which 
the lines of evidence we now have distinctly point; and while 
this still has somewhat the appearance of a forecast, it is one 
of those reasonable forecasts which give life and interest to the 
progress of science and philosophy alike. If such an antici- 
pation should lead to renewed investigation looking to the 



X PREFACE 

testing of the Darwinian theory in still further fields, it would 
have its use. 

I hope, therefore, that this little book may serve to stim- 
ulate others, especially students of the further humanities, 
Anthropology, Philology, Political Science, Literary Criti- 
cism, 1 etc., to make careful survey of their respective fields 
with such an end in view. 

I wish to add a word in this place on the relation of Mr. 
Alfred Russel Wallace to current Darwinism. The develop- 
ment of the Darwinian theory has tended to justify certain 
of Wallace's original views, rather than those of Darwin; 
and notably in just the one point — the exclusion of use- 
inheritance — which now serves to define Darwinism as dis- 
tinguished from other theories, it is Wallace who has led 
the way. It may safely be said also, I think that the bril- 
liant and significant researches made by Wallace subse- 
quently to the announcement of the theory of natural selec- 
tion, would practically have established that theory. Accord- 
ingly, the Darwinian theory of today might with entire 
appropriateness be called ' Wallaceism. ' The extraordinary 
modesty and high scientific morality of Wallace 2 should not 
lead his contemporaries to deny to him an equal place with 
Darwin in the development of evolution theory; and it 
is with this feeling in mind that I dedicate this little book 
on 'Darwinism' — entirely without his knowledge — to the 
great naturalist, Wallace. 

J. Mark Baldwin. 

Paris, September, igog. 

1 As, for example, the very interesting discussions of Prof. J. 
P. Hoskins on 'Biological Analogy in Literary Criticism,' in Modem 
Philology, April and July, 1909. 

2 See the address made by Mr. Wallace at the celebration of the 
Linna3an Society, Linnoean Society of London, Darwin-Wallace 
Celebration, igo8 (July 1). 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

Introductory i 

Chapter I. Darwinism and Psychology 7 

Chapter II. Darwinism and the Social Sciences 39 

Chapter III. Darwinism and Ethics 61 

Chapter IV. Darwinism and Logic 68 

Chapter V. Darwinism and Philosophy 78 

Chapter VI. Darwinism and Religion 88 

( Appendix A. Darwin's Judgment 107 

V Appendix B . Darwinism and Logic no 



DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 



INTRODUCTORY 

I 

It should be remembered that the book which we today 1 
associate especially with the name of Darwin — the book 
published just fifty years ago — was followed by another printed 
twenty years later. The Origin of Species was followed by 
The Descent of Man. 2 Darwin the zoologist is Darwin the 
humanist as well. He wrote besides a Biographical Sketch of 
an Infant. 3 It is suggestive that the order or sequence in the 
issue of these works holds also of the working out of Darwin's 
theory in the two great groups of sciences: the results of 
natural selection were fairly well worked out in biology some 
years before the influence of the theory became marked in the 
mental and moral sciences. 

We are today, however, in a position to speak of the influ- 
ence of Darwin, and of the development of Darwinism, in the 
Humanities. Both in general ways, seen especially in the 
spirit and method of scientific inquiry, and in specific ways, 
seen in the actual use of the theory of selection, this influence 
is vital and transforming. Besides the mental and moral 
sciences proper, the political and historicial sciences, also, and 
the sciences of language and of race — philology, anthropology, 

1 This allusion is to the day of the celebration of the publication 
of the Origin of Species by the American Philosophical Society of 
Philadelphia. See the Preface. 

2 First ed., 1871. Quotations in this paper are from the Ameri- 
can Reprint of the second edition, 1874. I cite also the American 
Reprint of the sixth edition of the Origin of Species. 

3 In Mind, O. S., II, pp. 285ft. 



2 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

and ethnology — show it strikingly. It is, however, of the first 
of these great divisions of the humanities that I shall speak, 
endeavoring to trace this influence in some detail. And 
I shall proceed in what may, in a large way, be called the 
genetic order: the order, that is, of relative dependence and 
complexity, beginning with the branch of knowledge nearest 
to Biology and most dependent upon it, namely, Psychology, 
then taking up Ethics and Sociology, and finally proceeding 
to the more general topics of Logic, Scientific Method, 
Philosophy and Religion. Of these provinces it is in Psy- 
chology and Sociology that the most characteristic results are 
to be found; yet in the other fields mentioned the general 
change of method and attitude due to Darwin's theory is 
so pronounced that it can in no sense be considered less 
important. 

II 

It may no doubt be fairly assumed that the reader knows 
in a general way what the theory of Natural Selection, Dar- 
win's great contribution to science, is and means. Yet there 
are certain misunderstandings of the matter that recur so 
persistently and die so hard that it may be well to outline briefly 
Darwin's actual teaching. 

Darwin and Darwinism. The 'Darwinism' of Darwin him- 
self might be taken to include all that Darwin believed and 
taught. This is not good procedure, however. The term 
' Darwinism' has come to be applied to the theory of Natural 
Selection alone, together with those extensions and develop- 
ments of it which preserve its essential conception; and this is 
the more necessary since the principal theory which has been 
developed historically in opposition to Darwin's, the Lamarck- 
ian theory, was also held by Darwin, as supplementary to 
Natural Selection. It is quite necessary, indeed, to set the 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

Lamarckian part of Darwin's views apart from the Darwin- 
ian part, and to consider the latter alone as true 'Darwinism.' 

Lamarck held to evolution, and worked out a theory of 
its actual working. 1 He supposed that the forces of the envi- 
ronment worked directly to modify individual animals; and 
also that these were greatly modified by their own efforts, 
habits, and activities during life — by 'use and disuse,' that is. 
The modifications of both sorts, occurring continually, 
were then inherited from generation to generation, the result 
being a continuous change in certain directions which in 
time produced the enormous differences found between 
different species. The critical and essential factor in this 
theory, of course, is that of the inheritance, by the offspring, 
of the specific modifications undergone by the parents; for 
without this there would be no accumulation of changes from 
one generation to another. This was singled out, therefore, 
as distinctly the 'Lamarckian factor.' It is known variously 
as the principle of 'inheritance of acquired characters,' 'use- 
inheritance," Lamarckian inheritance,' 'Lamarck's principle', 
etc. 

This principle, so named after Lamarck, has been resolutely 
excluded in the later development of Darwinism, although it 
was accepted by Darwin himself. For Darwinians have 
found the principle of Natural Selection more comprehensive 
than its author did; and the ' Neo-Darwinians' of the last 
generation — led by the other great discoverer of Natural Se- 
lection, Alfred Russel Wallace— believe in the 'all-suffi- 
ciency/ literally understood, of Darwin's law. 

What, then, is Darwinism, when the term is so restricted ? 
What is Natural Selection ? 

1 The reader may consult Prof. H. F. Osborn's From the Greeks 
to Darwin, for an exposition of the theories of evolution held before 
Charles Darwin. 



4 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

It is simply the fact that some living creatures survive and 
propagate their kind when others of the same kind can not. 
That is all. Those that survive and propagate appear to have 
been 'selected'; but they are naturally selected, without any 
external interference or any further reason of any kind than 
just the fact that they survive naturally when others die. 
Hence the term 'natural selection.' 

How is it, it may be asked, that so simple a fact can be of 
such consequence that the mere recognition of it amounts to a 
theory of evolution and establishes a great principle of science. 
To answer this question, we may point out the different steps 
involved in such a case of survival, with the resulting changes 
in the characters of the race when a vast number of such 
survivals have taken place during many generations. I will 
write down these points formally under numerical head- 
ings in order to introduce certain necessary terms at each 
stage of the exposition. 

i. Over-production with Variation. Nature produces 
individuals in numbers vastly in excess of those which are 
destined to live. In every litter of pigs and every hatching of 
fish, there are some born to die or barely to keep alive. But 
there are others sure to live and to beget offspring. The 
differences constitute 'variation;' which is simply the fact that 
the several cases, when taken together, are individually 
different. Some are more 'fit' to survive than others. 

2. Struggle for Existence. The result of this overproduc- 
tion is a struggle or competition among the individuals. The 
little pigs struggle to suckle; the little fish to escape their 
enemies— with the result that some win and live, while others 
lose and die. 

3. Survival of the Fittest. 1 Those that win are, of course, 
the ones most fit to meet the particular sort of demand made 

1 A phrase due to Herbert Spencer. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

of them. They have the ' characters' required for the contest 
— good wind, strong legs, sharp teeth, etc. The others, the 
less fit, are ' eliminated.' 

4. Inheritance of Characters. This is the final and most 
important link in the chain. Not only must the most fit live; 
they must also propagate their kind. The offspring must be 
like them in the respect in which they are themselves 'fit.' 
If the unfit or less fit are killed off, and so do not propagate 
at all, and the more or most fit do, then the next generation 
will be, on the average, more fit than the preceding was. 
That is, there is an advance from generation to generation 
in those characters upon which Natural Selection is acting. 
For example, suppose the gunners kill off each season the 
largest birds of a certain species before the mating time, then 
only the smaller birds will be left to pair and hatch their 
young : the result will be a gradual reduction in the average 
size of the whole species. 

As nature acts continuously, through her great forces, such 
elimination and survival continue through ages; and there 
is thus a progressive evolution of characters of all sorts. The 
utility of any character to the animal adds to his fitness, 
and the useful character is further developed. This, then, is 
the theory of Natural Selection, currently called Darwinism. 1 

*Cf. the remarks, in the Preface, on Wallace's relation to 'Dar- 
winism.' 



CHAPTER I 

DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 1 

/. Special Problems 

In any attempt to measure the influence of Darwin in 
psychology, we should first of all appreciate the major con- 
tributions made directly to this subject by Darwin himself. 
His theory of 'emotional expression' is one such contribu- 
tion, and his recognition of the place psychological characters 
as such have in organic evolution is another. 2 

In the first of these, the theory of the rise of emotional 
expression, we have a remarkable application of the principle 
of natural selection. Darwin's book, The Expression of the 
Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) is today the classic 
treatment of this subject, both by reason of the wealth 
of illustration he gives and also by reason of the fact that 
his theory is firmly established. Indeed there are today 
no theories in this field that do not essentially include Dar- 
win's principle of 'serviceable associated habits'; according to 
which emotional expressions are serviceable habits of action, 
associated with specific types of mental experience, and fixed 

1 Three other discussious of this topic have been brought out 
in connection with the Darwin anniversary: Lloyd Morgan's in 
the work Darwin and Modern Science, Angell's in the Darwin 
Number (May, 1909) of the Psychological Review, and Hall's in the 
volume Fifty Years of Darwinism. 

2 Darwin's use of psychology in connection with social theory 
and ethics, and his remarkable comparative observations upon 
human and animal minds, are spoken of in later sections of this 
paper. 

7 



8 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

in the organism by natural selection. This theory is not only 
accepted, but it has served to supply a basis for new 
theories of the emotions themselves. According to the well- 
known 'James-Lange' theory, the emotions, understood in 
the sense of the coarser feelings, which are known to have 
characteristic modes of physical expression, are due to the 
reporting-back into consciousness, by a ' back-stroke' or organic 
reverberation, of the fixed and accomplished expressions. 
This theory undoubtedly explains many of the more funda- 
mental and native emotional reactions; it is both confirm- 
atory of the original theory of Darwin and supplementary to it. 
As to the second point, the recognition of mental char- 
acters, it appears that Darwin's views have been equally 
influential. He saw that the evolution of mental charac- 
ters and traits was as important as that of the purely organic, 
and that the two were correlated with each other. 1 We find in 
certain of his theories definite recognition of mental characters, 
both as needing to be accounted for and as themselves impor- 
tant as evidence. In the theory of 'sexual selection,' for 
example, he recognizes the stimulating effects, through the 
senses, of color, form and action, and finds in this the reason 
for the evolution of these physical characters in the forms they 
actually show. In the theory of the origin of specific 'color 
markings' and other superficial characters which make known 
one individual of a species to another — a point of view devel- 
oped by Wallace 2 in important ways — mental characters such 

1 In another place {Development and Evolution, ch. i, ii) , I have 
pointed out that there are not two evolutions, one ' organic' and the 
other ' mental,' but that mind and body have evolved by one process 
and in one series of graduated stages; evolution, that is, has been 
' psycho-physical.' 

2 Wallace's early reports in Journal of Travel (ed. by Murray), 
vol. i , may be referred to, as well as his later works. The principal 
writings of Alfred Russel Wallace are Darwinism, etc.; Natural Selec- 
tion: and Tropical Nature; and Studies, Scientific and Social. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 9 

as observation, recognition, gregarious habit, appetite, etc., 
are cited as affording striking instances of the operation of 
natural selection. And it is interesting to note that Darwin 
did not merely place the psychic functions and characters on a 
par with the physical, as items in which, on account of their 
utility, evidence of natural selection might be seen; he 
recognized with Lamarck a certain efficiency in the mind itself 
to produce, through effort, results which heredity fixed and 
transmitted. This is especially to be remarked as showing 
Darwin's openness of mind to theories that appeared to be 
supported by facts; although, in the result, as psychologists, 
we have to look upon his own theory of natural selection as 
the true one. The very great importance of psychical char- 
acters, in connection with the evolution of organic forms 
and colors, has now been made out in many cases ; notably in the 
theories of mimicry and protective coloration, in which not 
only the sight and taste but also the 'profiting by experience' — 
the ' education' — of individuals comes into play. The develop- 
ment of the theory of selection with reference to organs and 
functions involving joint physical and mental characters is 
found at its best in the theory of the rise of animal instinct — 
a problem so far-reaching and fundamental that I select 
it as a starting point for the further exposition. 

Instinct. It is in connection with the problem of instinct, 
indeed, that the trying-out of the selection theory in matters 
psychological was precipitated. The conditions which made 
this question crucial were discerned early in the develop- 
ment of Darwinian controversies. In such representative 
writers as Spencer and Romanes we find the problem empha- 
sized : the one making instinct the citadel of the defence of 
Lamarckian principles, the other finding it necessary to 
adhere to Lamarckism, although with growing reluctance, 
on account of the difficulties in the way of a purely Darwinian 



IO DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

view of instinct. One of these writers was polemical against 
Darwinism; the other, although on the whole more sympa- 
thetic, nevertheless joined in the criticism of the view that 
natural selection alone, without the inheritance of acquired 
characters, was sufficient to account for instinct. The two 
great objections to a purely Darwinian theory of instinct may 
now be stated. 

First, it was maintained in theory that, as instinct is a very 
complex function, which becomes of utility to the creature 
possessing it only when it is perfect, partial and undeveloped 
instincts would be not useless only, but actually damaging. 
Imagine an animal having but a partial instinct to swim : liking 
the water, but capable only of beginning the movements 
necessary to keep afloat. His very tendency to try would 
only endanger his life, by taking him into the water. Or 
imagine a bird capable only of beginning the very complex 
serial processes necessary to build a nest. Where would be 
the utility of this, and how would natural selection come into 
operation upon these beginnings, to build up the completed 
act. 2 This is the objection from so-called ' selective value' — 
a phrase at. one time very current in these discussions. It is 
in the case of instinct that the objection based on 'selective 
value' is strongest. There must be, it is said, a sufficient 
development of the instinct at the start to give it ' selective 
value,' and so to secure its further fixing in the fully evolved 

1 See Romanes' presentation of these objections in his Post- 
Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility. Darwin's own detailed 
reply to them is to be found in the last edition (sixth) of the Origin 
of Species, chap, vii; his account of instinct is in ch. viii of the same 
work. The present writer's full discussion of these points is to be 
found in his Development and Evolution, 1902, ch. v. 

2 Darwin himself cites the destructive character of the partial 
instinct of certain birds which dispense with nests of their own, and 
do not succeed in depositing their eggs cuckoo-like in other birds' 
nests. Origin, ed. cit., vol. i, pp. 335 f. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY II 

function. Romanes urged this objection consistently to the 
last, holding that intelligence must have been operative to 
secure these complex adjustments, and that the results of 
the accommodations intelligently made must have been 
handed down by heredity until the instinct became independ- 
ent of the intelligence — the whole being known as the theory 
of 'lapsed intelligence.' 

Second, the objection based on 'correlation' of characters 
or co-adaptation. An instinct, it is said, is not a simple 
character, of such a sort that we can speak of slight or fluctu- 
ating variations in it, as we would of variations in length of 
nose, or color of skin. On the contrary, it is an act involving 
the ' correlation' of many relatively complex and independent 
functions all working together with the greatest nicety of 
grouping and association. It involves the co-adaptation of 
many parts, of a sort which, when done intentionally, 
requires a long and painstaking education of various groups 
of muscles, with correlation of the senses, such as vision 
with hearing, touch with muscular sense, all in an act slowly 
acquired and made habitual. If any element in the 
combination fails or is displaced the whole is wrecked. Now, 
says the critic, how can ' spontaneous variation,' of a congeni- 
tal sort, produce these necessary correlations ? Would it not 
require a conspiracy of the forces of variation, distributed in 
various and remote portions of the body, to produce such a 
joint result, and to produce it at a bound, finished and effec- 
tive ? Would the laws of chance countenance this ? 

This is the objection from 'correlated characters' or 'co- 
adaptation,' also strongly urged by Romanes in his latest 
discussions. And to meet them the two writers mentioned, 
both of them having claims to psychological consideration, 
fell back upon the Lamarckian factor. These co-adaptations, 
say they, show the inheritance of the actual learning and prac- 



12 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

tice of generations. The American author Cope also 
strongly urges these considerations. 1 

These objections, when stated in general terms in zoology, 
have been met by Darwinians in various ways; but the 
zoologists, dealing generally with simpler characters, have not 
fully realized their force in the case of instinct. The develop- 
ment of Weismannian views, involving the complete separa- 
tion of germ-cells and soma or body, and the pre-formation of 
organic structures in the germ, which is the exclusive bearer 
of the hereditary characters, only sharpened the issue, by 
ruling out once for all any directive influence upon evolution 
of individual accommodations, including, of course, the 
intelligent adjustments which animals abundantly show. 
Darwin's hypothesis of 'change of function' — according to 
which an earlier but different function in each case served to 
preserve the incipient stages of the instinct — while undoubtedly 
useful in explaining certain structures in the lower forms of 
life, does not fully answer here. 2 For even if an instinct be 
considered as made up of a variety of simpler functions, as 

1 E. D. Cope, The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution. It is 
interesting to note that Darwin recognized and often utilized corre- 
lation, but considered it fundamentally obscure. See Descent of 
Man, ed. cit., 'Preface,' and pp. 48 f. It is plain that it was such 
cases that led Darwin, also, to the full acceptance of the inheritance of 
acquired characters, as a careful reading of his chapter on 'Instinct' 
will show {Origin, ch. viii) . In certain arguments he even urges the 
improbability of correlated variations. See Origin, pp. 280 and 318. 

2 One of Darwin's famous illustrations is that of the derivation of 
the lungs from the fish's swim-bladder {Origin, p. 276): see other 
cases in the Origin, ch. vii, esp. pp. 309 ff. Darwin also discusses 
the cases of imperfect function considered as transitions to complete 
instinct {Origin, ed. cit., pp. 330 ff); and his claim that in many- 
cases the early stages were mere physiological characters, correlated 
with other active functions, should not be overlooked {Origin, ed. 
cit., p. 266). It is a supposition never yet done justice to in the 
discussions of this question. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 1 3 

it usually is, still the combination of them in a single act 
would be all the more difficult if they had already become 
separately fixed. We find an analogous problem in the learn- 
ing of any complex new action, such as type- writing or bicycle 
riding; we can make the necessary movements separately, but 
not only can we not make them together without excessive 
pains and much practice, but the practice requires a flexibil- 
ity of action, and readiness of inhibition, the opposite of 
fixity and habit. What is the likelihood, then, that spontane- 
ous variation would turn out the combination fully formed ? 

To the psychologists, at any rate, who are sympathetically 
disposed toward Darwinism in principle, the problem of 
instinct comes, in view of such difficulties as these, to repre- 
sent that of the method of evolution itself; at the same time 
that the extreme facility and ease of the Lamarckian solution 
does not appeal to them — with some eminent exceptions, 
notably Spencer and Wundt — for it in turn leads to conclu- 
sions which are quite unacceptable. If experience is inherited 
why have not racial psychological experiences of the most 
ancient and uniform order — such as those of space percep- 
tion, time estimation, verbal speech, the rudiments of the 
three 'r's,' drilled into every child and used with absolute 
uniformity throughout life — why have not such functions 
become congenital ? To many psychologists, the Lamarck- 
ian theory has seemed, on the whole, too easy and superficial. 

One has only to compare Wundt's weak defence * of ' use- 
inheritance,' with James' radical criticism 2 of Spencer, to 
see on which side the balance of psychological opinion would 
be likely to array itself. 3 

1 W. Wundt, Human and Animal Psychology (Eng. Trans.) 

2 W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, last chapter. 

3 Darwin's chief discussion of the effects of use and disuse is to 
be found in his work, Variation in Plants and Animals under Domesti- 
cation. 



14 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

It was through Weismann, however, that this problem 
again became urgent in biological circles, and two of his most 
famous hypotheses were framed to extricate the Darwinian 
principle: the hypotheses of ' Intra-selection' and 'Germinal 
Selection.' Both are attempts to deal with complex and 
correlated characters without resort to the Lamarckian prin- 
ciple. Weismann's criticism of Lamarckism and his con- 
structive views on heredity are equally famous. 1 

Intra-selection. This principle of Weismann was an exten- 
sion of the very fruitful conception of Roux, called by him 
the 'struggle of the parts,' 2 a conception which carried the 
idea of natural selection into the adjustment of parts to one 
another within the organism. Weismann generalized this 
in his famous Romanes lecture at Oxford, on Intra-selection, 3 
and gave to Roux' 'struggle of the parts' a more func- 
tional turn. The correlations of the organism are brought 
about, he supposed, during development through the actual 
flexibility of the organs. The muscles accommodate them- 
selves to the growing of the bone, the strength of neck to the 
weight of horns, the grouping of functions to the require- 
ments of the situations of life, in the greatest detail. This 
is considered so essential and radical a process from the start 
in each individual's career, that the living habits of an animal 
species are constant and progressive only because the detailed 
processes of intra-selection are repeated in an identical way 
generation after generation, by every individual creature of 
the kind in question. Thus — and this is essential to Weis- 
mann's view — the continuity of the 'germ-plasm' remains 
undisturbed; it is the 'soma,' the body, that is molded and 

1 See A. Weisman, Essays upon Heredity. (Eng. trans.) 

2 Roux, 'Die Kampf der Theile im Organismus' (1881), Gesam. 
Abhand. ueber Entwickhmgsmechanik d. Organismen, Vol. i. 

3 The Effect of External Influences upon Development, A. Weis- 
mann. (1894.) 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 1 5 

remolded in analogous ways and with identical results in all 
the individuals of successive generations. 

It is interesting to note that originally this idea of a se- 
lective process within the organism — a fruitful extension of 
Darwin's principle — was not exclusvely the biologist's posses- 
sion. It was independently conceived by certain psychologists 
at about the same time. Theories of organic accommoda- 
tion or adjustment involving an 'over-production' of move- 
ments, with a resulting selection of favorable combinations 
or 'happy hits,' had been advanced by Spencer and Bain, to 
account for the learning of acts of skill, quite apart from the 
question of evolution. Spencer's hypothesis was very general : 
he merely postulated an ' excess discharge' from the nervous 
centers, in certain conditions, from which 'happy hits' or 
adaptations were made. Bain made the theory more pre- 
cise, holding that pleasure resulting from the fortunate com- 
binations 'clinched' these movements, while pain inhibited 
the unfortunate ones, and so the adjustments secured were 
preserved. Later theories have worked definitely on this 
basis, applying directly and consciously the idea of natural 
selection, and using the term 'functional selection' or some 
similar expression for the fixing of accommodative move- 
ments. 1 

This is a more psychological or psycho-physical theory than 
those of Roux and Weismann . It gives a solution indeed prac- 
tically identical in result with theirs, but having the added 
motive of Darwinian selection. The psychologists give 

1 A critical account of the theories of Spencer and Bain is to be 
found in ch. vii of my work, Mental Development (1894; 3d ed., 
1906). 'Functional Selection' was suggested in that work {Mental 
Development, 2nd ed., 1895); it is used by Lloyd Morgan, A nimal 
Behaviour, and others. See also the writer's earlier article, 
'The Origin of Volition,' in Proc. Int. Cong, of Psychol., London, 
1892. 



1 6 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

attention to the actual processes as they take place in the 
individual. 

But this is not all. The biologists and comparative psy- 
chologists have together closed in upon the problem of learn- 
ing in general. The problem of 'educability,' of 'profiting 
by experience,' has been attacked throughout the entire range 
of organic forms, with striking harmony of results, summed 
up by the phrase 'trial and error.' From the infusoria's 
limited modification of behavior 1 to the child's extended 
education, it is found that all learning is by a process of 
strenuous, excessive, and varied discharges. Through such 
discharges adjustive modifications occur in the mass of 
earlier habits ; pleasure and pain, and in the higher animals, 
attention, being the regulating functions. It takes place in a 
manner to which the Darwinian conception of selection is 
strictly applicable. Quite apart, then, from the details of 
the analysis in particular cases, and from the problem of 
isolating the psychic and organic factors involved, we may 
record this result as a striking application of Darwin- 
ism. 

Its bearing on the question of the origin of instinct is, how- 
ever, still very ambiguous. Are we to stop with Weismann 
and hold that these complicated processes of learning specific 
acts are repeated by every individual of every generation, 
with no effect upon the variations of the germ -plasm, and no 
influence upon heredity ? If so, how could they be embodied 
in instinct ? 

Weismann saw the difficulty of securing the perfection of 
the instincts on such a basis; either it amounts to denying that 
the seemingly perfect instincts are ever congenital, or if it be 

1 See Jennings, The Behavior of the Lower Organisms; and for 
higher animals, LI. Morgan, Animal Behaviour, and the literature 
cited in Washburn's The Animal Mind. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 1 7 

allowed that they are congenital, it encounters the criticisms 
urged by Romanes and others — to the effect that the prelimi- 
nary stages are useless, and the necessary correlations of 
characters are most unlikely. Weismann therefore made a 
further application of the selection principle to the germinal 
elements themselves, finding the locus of struggle and survival 
still more hidden within the organism. This is the hypothesis 
of Germinal Selection. 1 Apart from any experimental evi- 
dence for this conception, it may be said that it makes the 
theory of preformism more ironclad than ever, since the germs 
selected bear their intrinsic potencies of development. 

Organic Selection. It appeared clear to others that the 
hypothesis of germinal selection was not necessary — so far as 
the problem of instinct was concerned. The conditions of 
the problem were now so clearly defined that a further sugges- 
tion was made simultaneously by certain psychologists and 
biologists alike, 2 which showed that the resources of Dar- 
winism were not exhausted. 3 It appeared evident that if 
Darwin's principle of variation with selection, on the one 

1 This, as well as the other important hypotheses of Weismann, 
is expounded systematically in his general treatise, The Evolution 
Theory, 1904; see also his paper in the Cambridge anniversary 
volume Darivin and Modern Science. 

2 LI. Morgan, F. H. Osborn and the present writer (to whom 
the name 'Organic Selection' is due). The original papers of all 
these writers (of date 1896), together with expositions by Poulton 
and others, are collected in my volume Development and Evolution 
(1902). Prof. LI. Morgan gives a new statement in the Cambridge 
volume, Darwin and Modern Science, 1909, pp. 428-9. In the 
same volume (p. 41) Prof . Weismann cites his Romanes lecture as 
having anticipated the theory of Organic Selection. As I have 
already discussed the point elsewhere, Development and Evolution, 
pp. 1 83ft, it need not be taken up again. In any case the theory 
is strengthened by Prof. Weismann's adhesion to it. 

3 It was actually in discussions of instinct, indeed, that Prof. 
LI. Morgan and the present writer hit upon this conception. 



1 8 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

hand, and Weismann's principle of 'intra-selection,' taken 
with the psychologist's 'functional selection,' on the other 
hand — if these principles were true, then a further result fol- 
lowed of itself. If, that is, a selection of processes and habits 
goes on within the*brgeliism — a functional selection resulting 
in a real molding of the individual — there would be at every 
stage of growth a combination of congenital characters with 
acquired modifications; natural selection would fall in each 
case upon this joint or correlated result; and the organisms 
showing the most effective combinations would survive. 
Variation plus modification, the joint product actually present 
at the time the struggle comes on, this is what selection pro- 
ceeds upon, and not, as strict neo-Darwinism or Weismann- 
ism supposes, upon the congenital variations taken alone. 

The result is that variation would tell most when in the 
direction in which the accommodations were being made and 
found useful; and on the other hand, accommodations would 
be made where the variations best permitted. There would 
then be an accumulation of variations, 'coincident' 1 in 
direction with the acquired modifications, the function becom- 
ing more and more congenital from generation to generation. 
The accommodations and modifications of the individual 
serve as a supplement or screen to his endowment; and in 
course of time the endowment factor, by variation simply, 
with no resort to the actual inheritance of acquired charac- 
ters, comes to its perfection. This result of the 'coincidence' 
of modification and variation in guiding the course of evolu- 
tion 2 has been called 'organic selection.' 

1 A phrase due to Lloyd Morgan. See his volume, Habit and 
Instinct. 

2 The general point of view has been styled that of evolution 
by 'Orthoplasy.' On the terminology of this theory, see Nature, 
1897, P- 5 5 ^- This point of view is strictly Darwinian; but neither 
this way of putting the factors together, nor the results which follow 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 1 9 

This result of the operation of the recognized factors is 
very simple and very evident. It meets both the objections 
urged to the Darwinian theory of instinct. For, first, it 

from it — the opportunity it gives to mind to guide and direct evolu- 
tion, by preserving and forwarding variations in intelligent and 
social lines — occurred to Darwin; probably because he was more and 
more ready in critical cases to accept Lamarckism, as, for example, 
in his discussions of the origin of the giraffe's neck (Origin, vol. i, 
pp. 276 ff.), and of the American monkey's prehensile tail (ibid, vol. 
i, p. 294), both cases in which active accommodation with coincident 
variations are actually sufficient. A similar case is before me as I 
write, observing the swans of Lake Geneva. The young of different 
stages of development show relatively different length of neck. 
Those with longer necks can feed under water over a greater area of 
the bottom. Constant stretching of the neck not only develops 
each swan, but may be supposed to have encouraged variations in 
the direction of longer neck, that is variations coincident in direction 
with their active accommodative processes. So the long neck has 
been evolved. — Darwin held with great consistency that instincts 
have been gained, step by step, ' 'through the variability of the mental 
organs and natural selection, without any conscious intelligence 
on the part of the animal, during each successive generation." 
Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 77. See also, p. 76. In one case only 
do I find that Darwin recognized the results, in the way of continued 
' coincident' variation, which follow upon individual accommodation 
or habit. I have just come upon the passage, which I quote: 

"It has been objected," he says "to the foregoing view of the origin 
of instincts that the variations of structure and of instinct must have 
been simultaneous and accurately adjusted to each other, as a modi- 
fication in the one without any immediate corresponding change in 
the other would have been fatal. The force of this objection rests 
entirely on the assumption that the changes in the instincts and 
structure are abrupt. To take as an illustration the case of the 
larger titmouse, this bird often holds the seeds of the yew between its 
teeth on a branch, and hammers with its beak till it gets at the 
kernel. Now what special difficulty would there be in natural 
selection preserving all the slight individual variations in the shape 
of the beak, which were better and better adapted to break open the 
seeds, until a beak was formed as well constructed for this purpose 
as that of the* nuthatch, at the same time that habit, or compulsion, 
or spontaneous variations of taste, led the bird to become more and 



20 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

accounts for the immature stages of the instinct, by recogniz- 
ing that at these stages the endowment is supplemented 
by accommodations sufficient to give them selective value: a 
'little sense' perhaps, as in imitation or play, is displayed. 1 
In this way the appearance of intelligence — of ' lapsed intelli- 
gence' — is given to the function; for evolution has advanced by 
the aid, and in the direction, of conscious adjustment. And, 
second, it not only allows, it makes use of, the widest corre- 
lation of characters; for in the processes of intra-selection and 
functional selection, just the molding and correlation of the 
parts to an organic end is what is most telling for survival. 2 
Let these keep the species alive for generations, as Weismann 
supposes, or through what Darwin calls ' transitions,' while 
coincident variations are being accumulated to supersede 
them, as the hypothesis of organic selection supposes, and 
there results a congenital correlation, such as is shown in the 
complex instincts. There is the appearance of what 

more a seed eater? In this case the beak is supposed to be slowly 
modified by natural selection, subsequently to, but in accordance with 
slowly changing habits or taste.'" He then goes on to suppose the 
contrary process taking place in the feet — the habits following 
variations in structure toward increased size. This is a perfectly 
clear resort to the hypothesis of 'organic selection,' and while it is 
simply thrown out in a single instance and not taken advantage of 
in other cases, it still shows that Darwin would have sympathized 
with the more extended use made of the principle by certain con- 
temporary writers. (The italics are mine.) 

1 It was shown by Professor James Ward, Art. 'Psychology,' 
Ency. Brit., ninth edition, who used the term 'Subjective Selection' 
to characterize the influence of consciousness, that the presence of 
mind would enable the animal to 'select' his environment in some 
measure. 

2 This aspect of the matter has been especially dwelt upon in my 
own discussions, in contrast to those of Morgan and Osborn (see 
Devel. and Evolution, chap, xiv.) It was suggested to me in the 
course of prolonged experiments upon the learning of adjustive 
acts by young children. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 21 

Romanes, Cope and other Lamarckians assume — the inherit- 
ance of modifications — but it is accomplished by the operation 
of Darwinian factors only. 

This point of view has been generalized for all those 
functions in which acquired modifications are combined with 
variations in the life history of the organism; 1 it is difficult 
to find any, indeed, in which they are not so combined. 

It also explains the decay of congenital characters (e. g., 
of instincts) where this occurs; for in cases where the intelli- 
gent or other adjustive factor is on the whole of greater 
utility, variations toward the disintegration of the instinctive 
congenital part, would be selected. 













i^^N" 


J. 








\ a " jjS' 










\a' 










\a 


























NT 












e" 


Ac 












e' 














r 
















2> 


sr 


s 


i* 


S 


f t 


*c 









Diagram illustrating the rise and decay of a congenital function, 
such as instinct, g, g,' etc. = succession generations; Ef = line of 
effective function; le, le' = course of evolution; e, e, etc. =congeni- 
tal endowment; a, a', etc. = functional accommodation. Natural 
selection falls upon the effective function ae, a'e', etc. ; and utility- 
alone determines when the congenital endowment e, e' , etc., shall be 
favored by selection, as shown in the ascending line le, or when it 
shall fall away in favor of the accommodative factor (a, a' etc.), as 
shown in the descending line le' . The striking case of the latter is 
that of the growth of intelligent action superseding instinctive. 

Having thus illustrated, by means of the most complex 
functions in the whole range of animal habit, the working out 

1 See the section on ' Plasticity,' just below. 



22 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

of Darwin's principles, we may now broaden our view to take 
in more explicitly the psychological aspects of evolution. 

The theory just outlined presents, to my mind, the only 
approach we have to an intrinsic union of biology and psychol- 
ogy in the handling of the evolution problem. It is plain 
that such a derivation of instinct makes use of the presence 
of the rudiment of mind, wherever it is found, among the 
accommodative processes which act to preserve variations. 
For as I have just said, give the animal a little sense 1 — a grain 
of the capacity to 'profit by experience,' to imitate, to co- 
operate, to deceive, 2 to remember and distinguish what is 
good for it from what is bad — a bit of intelligence, broadly 
understood, and he is started on the career of learning in 
comparison with which his earlier achievements become 
quite insignificant. If, in short, we are to allow that accommo- 
dative or learning processes of whatever kind do have any 
influence, however indirect, on the course of evolution, then 
that prime, that superb weapon of learning, mind, comes to 
its own and starts upon its splendid career. But if this be so, 
if mind be natural and also useful, then we are still of course 
within the Darwinian circle of ideas. Why are not mental 
faculties and functions to be considered characters which 
have been evolved by selection for their utility ? 

Darwin held this, as we see by reading again the Descent of 
Man, chapters iii and iv, which constitute still one of the best 
treatises on Comparative Psychology. But instead of the 
desultory recognition of the place and effectiveness of mental 
states in a theory dealing mainly with the physical, we now see 

1 "A little dose of judgment or reason, as Pierre Huber expresses 
it, often comes into play, even with animals low in the scale of nature. " 
Darwin, Origin, ed. cit., p. 320. 

2 Darwin cites the admirable instance of a race of rats surviving 
in competition with others by reason of their superior 'cunning.' 
Des. of Man, ed. cit., p. 91. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 23 

the universal principle of the relation of mental to organic evo- 
lution. Mind is correlated with plasticity, its evolution with 
that of brain and nerves. The history of the evolution of 
these organs is also that of the evolution of mind. In this 
we have the next great step in which biology and psychology 
join hands in a safe and accomplished generalization : that of 
the correlation of nervous plasticity with mind, of 'educa- 
bility' with 'sense.' 

Plasticity and Mind. One of the striking features, perhaps 
the most striking, of the evolution of mammals is the progress 
made by the brain. It is the organ of increasing plasticity and 
'educability.' 1 Its evolution has been correlated with the 
decline of the instinctive and completely congenital functions. 
As we advance upward in the mammalian scale, we find 
decreasing instinctive endowment and increasing plasticity, 
accompanied by increasing mental capacity and educability. 
The human infant is poorest in instinctive endowment, most 
helpless at birth, but most teachable and most highly equipped 
with brain and mind. 2 This means that, the utility of the 
conscious type of action once established, the premium put on 
variations in that line, carrying with them more plastic nerv- 
ous substance and decaying congenital functions, was both 
enormous and effective. Once begun, intelligent adjustment 

1 A term used by Sir Ray Lankester {Nature, lxi, 1900, p. 624; see 
also Lankester's The Kingdom of Man, p. 123), who has pointed 
out the important genetic correlations of increasing plasticity. 

2 In Darwin's phrase, Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 124, in man, 
instinct is replaced by 'impulse guided by reason and experience. 
Darwin's use of terms is that followed here. The contention that man 
has a great many instincts involves the definition of instinct 
according to which all native impulses or tendencies come under the 
term — a very confusing usage. According to our usage an instinct 
is a function carried out in a definite way , although not always perfectly, 
without learning. 



24 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

supersedes all other kinds. So we find a remarkable inter- 
mingling of types of function and even of different ways of 
performing the same function, in the higher animals and 
man. The union of mental and organic characters found fit, 
in the way mentioned above, has varied with the relative util- 
ity attaching to one combination or another 1 (cf . the Diagram) . 
Some functions of urgent and vital importance have remained 
instinctive or reflex. In other cases, the instinctive has been 
largely or in part superceded by the intelligent. We find a 
very wide range of cases of more or less ' imperfect' instincts 
in which we may see intelligent learning actually supplement- 
ing the imperfect native reactions. Natural selection falls 
upon the combination, and the best combination wins out — 
sometimes this, sometimes that. Where a reflex of extreme 
rapidity, as the reflex winking of the eye, is of importance, it is 
preserved, in spite of the duplication of the function from the 
higher centers of voluntary and intelligent action. In other 
cases, such as the movement of the ear in man, 2 all utility 
seems to have vanished from both types of action, although in 
certain of the lower forms the ear movements are most 
important for acuteness of hearing and the localization of 
sounds. All this takes place in detail while the great progres- 
sion in mind, in plasticity, in learning capacity, is going on. 
Some functions replaced by intelligence are running down 
hill, while others, not getting the full utility of the intelligence, 
or having a special utility of their own, are being built up, 
both processes alike being fed by variation. 

The force of this, for our present purpose, is this: plasticity 

1 Cf . Lloyd Morgan's illustration from the habits of young chicks 
Habit and Instinct. See also K. Groos, The Play of Animals and 
The Play of Man. 

2 A case interestingly discussed by Darwin, Descent of Man, 
ed. cit., p. 15. The duplication of functions in this sense is fully 
discussed in my Development and Evolution, ch. vi, sec. 1. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 25 

is a real character, a character the opposite of fixity. It is 
opposed even to the potential sort of fixity assumed by pre- 
formism — the theory that all subsequent adjustments are 
already present potentially in the germ. It leaves to the 
organism genuine alternatives; genuine novelties of adjust- 
ment are possible. And consciousness, intelligence, is also 
a real character, correlated with plasticity. Both are present 
together, however we may account for it; and both have been 
advanced for their utility, as Darwin's hypothesis requires. 1 
The Utility of Mind. A further word remains to be said 
concerning the utility of mind, or of the intelligent type of 
function. Intelligence is of the nature of a general or 
'blanket' function: it can be turned here and there for the 
performance of anything within its reach. It has its early 
illustrations among the animals in imitation and play, to 
which such general utility attaches. It has only recently 
been shown how enormously useful both imitation and play 
are to many species, especially in their family and gregarious 
habits. We see in these functions, as in the more developed 
intelligent functions, ways in which many of the organic 
processes — the exceptions being of the vegetative and reflex 
sorts — maybe directly supplemented, by the creature's efforts 
consciously directed, to the actual saving of its life. This 
becomes, then, a capital instance of the operation of 'organic 
selection;' of the union and joint utility of congenital and 
acquired characters, for the incidence of natural selection. 
Since the utility attaches to the combination, it is the combina- 
tion that has survived in various forms, reaching its culmina- 
tion in the mind and brain of man. 

1 See Darwin's terse sentences concerning the origin of the 
intellectual faculties by natural selection, Descent of Man, ed. cit., 
p. 140. In his detailed discussions, chapters iii and iv of the same 
work, his object is to show that man's mind differs only in degree of 
development from the animal's. 



26 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

This we may call Darwinism psycho-physically applied. 
It is well, of course, to cast about for other principles — to work 
out Vitalism, Mendelism, Mutationism, etc. 1 — in those sciences 
which do not have to deal with the problem of adaptation, 
or of the accommodation of the organism through its external 
characters. But wherever the question arises of the relation 
of organisms inter se, and to the environing conditions of 
their life, the foregoing are not only the fruitful principles, 
they are the only principles we are able to consider at all. 
Variation, accommodation, selection — these three. 

Psychologists are of necessity concerned with the relations 
of individuals as wholes to one another and the world 
of nature. Their problems are those of accommodation and 
adaptation; of action, and of thinking considered in 
relation to action. We find, therefore, that the explana- 
tions due to Darwinism are bringing this great field into 
fruitful union with biology; and the recognition of joint men- 
tal and physical characters, utilities, and selections, is of the 
greatest evidential value for Darwinism. It more than off- 
sets any weakening that may have seemed to come in recent 
years from embryology or cytology; for it adds to the range of 
Darwin's principle the whole stretch of the humanities, the 
sciences of the life and works of man. It is to the credit of 
Darwin himself that he did not claim to have discovered the 
principles of the minute internal organization of animals, 
with which the newer biological sciences concern themselves; 
and even his principle of variation left the questions of the 

1 All these types of theory are well represented, both pro and con, 
in the memorial volumes cited, and I need not discuss them here. 
It is necessary, however, to deprecate the animus that some writers 
of these schools show toward Darwin's theory. T. H. Morgan (vitalist) 
writes a veritable caricature of Darwinism (in his Evolution and 
Adaptation) and Bateson (mutationist) enters the bull-ring when- 
ever he hears of fluctuating variations. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 27 

origin, exact extent and range of such changes open for the 
detailed investigations of the future. 1 

We should expect, however, that such a thing as conscious- 
ness, mind, having the critical utility and enormous develop- 
ment now assigned to it, would show some characteristic laws 
of operation; and that, in the carrying over of Darwinian 
principles into this field, certain modifications and exten- 
sions of these principles would be come upon. This is 
the case. The first general question to which I wish to 
advert in this connection is one about which certain of the 
fiercest controversies have been waged — the question of 
heredity. 

Heredity, Physical and Social. It will have been noticed 
that in the foregoing we have assumed that the operation 
of heredity is restricted to congenital characters, finding it 
unnecessary to believe that acquired modifications are handed 
down. In this position, the general rejection of theLamarck- 
ian view of heredity, now common to biologists and psy- 
chologists alike, is concurred in. The variations which we 
find available for physical inheritance are congenital changes; 
the utility of individual modifications is confined to their 
influence in screening, supplementing and preserving the natu- 
ral equipment of individuals and species, and thus directing 
the course of evolution. We have no reason to depart from 
this position in the matter of mental variations and the educa- 
tion of the individual. Mental characters already congenital 
are inherited; and the plasticity, which intelligence carries 
with it, is a congenital character. There is no evidence of the 
transmission of the results of mental education or experience; 
but both physical and mental endowments and the variations 
arising in them are subject to continuous physical transmis- 

1 His candid confession, already cited, of ignorance as to the 
causes of ' correlation' is a case in point. 



28 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

sion. 1 So far the consistent application of Darwinian 
principles. 

But when we come to ask for a full account of the propaga- 
tion of mental acquisitions from generation to generation, 
we find it necessary to recognize another form of handing 
down or real transmission. Once admit that the intelligence, 
even in its simplest forms, as seen in imitation, play and the 
resulting accommodative actions, can be applied to the learn- 
ing of anything, and that variations in plasticity are selected 
to allow of its development — this once admitted, we have the 
possibility of a continuous handing down from generation to 
generation, a 'social heredity,' 2 which is no longer subject to 
the limitations set upon physical heredity. This recognition 
of the continuity of tradition or social heredity is of great 
importance in the social sciences; and it is not foreign to 
biology and psychology. It is found in operation in animal 
companies, where imitation is active to enable the young to 

1 We may, of course, follow Darwin's prudent example, and 
await further evidence ; but since his time the supposed instances of 
inheritance of acquired modifications have been one by one given 
up, and today such inheritance, even if admitted, would be restricted 
to cases of modification of the germ plasm; and this is practically 
only another name for variation in the Darwinian sense. Recent 
experiments on the artificial modification of the germ cells, as those 
of MacDougal on plants (Carnegie Inst, publications, No. 81; see 
also a paper by MacDougal in the Darwin memorial volume, Fifty 
Years of Darwinism, New York, 1909), show that the results of 
such modification are not ' specific/ that is, not in lines that could be 
likened to the inheritance of specific changes; but 'general,' and 
akin to the spontaneous variations that occur under the action of 
changed environmental conditions. It should always be remem- 
bered that Lamarckian inheritance, as a working principle, 'requires 
the reproduction in the offspring of specifically the same modification 
as that which the parent underwent. 

2 This phrase was introduced by the present writer in his 
Social and Ethical Interpretations, 1st ed., where the principle is 
worked out in detail. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 20, 

learn the actions, calls, and general behavior of parents and 
associates. Darwin and Wallace 1 both early recognized 
this factor at work in the family life of animals and birds. It 
will recur below in our consideration of the social sciences; 
here I briefly call attention to this factor, in order to discuss 
the gregarious sort of variations it requires and develops 
under the action of natural selection. 

Gregariousness. We are all familiar with the general fact 
of gregarious habit among the animals. We may use the 
term for all sorts of natural association in families, companies, 
etc. We are also very sure that much of this has an instinct- 
ive basis, and also that in some cases much of it is acquired. 
In fact there seems to be usually an adjustment of native and 
acquired elements, a 'joint' state or union of characters very 
similar to that which we have found to be required for the 
derivation of instinct and the rise of intelligence. 

So soon, however, as we inquire as to the sort of variations 
such gregarious habits or instincts require, we find a most 
interesting correlation not before brought before us. It is 
plain that for any sort of co-operative habit to which utility 
would attach, two or more individuals must be brought into a 
mode of common action. Either they must be prepared to 
unite in doing the one thing jointly, or their activities and 
characters must be so correlated that the action of one will 
supplement and make effective the action or characters of 
the other. 2 For example, in an animal or bird family, 

1 See Darwin, Descent of Man, ed. cit., pp. 77, 82, and 97, and 
his citation from Wallace, Contrib. to Natural Selection, p. 212, a 
point much developed in later publications by Wallace. Darwin 
probably overestimated the 'perfection' of many of the animal 
instincts at the first performance; Wallace shows that they are often 
very imperfect until supplemented by imitative learning. 

2 Darwin discusses such cases, e.g., the correlation of the mam- 
mary gland in the mother with the sucking instinct of the young, 
(Origin, ed. cit., vol. i., p. 296). 



30 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

the parental instincts on the side of the old must be correlated 
with the filial activities on the side of the young. The 
hen 'clucks,' the chicks respond by action or call. Either 
without the other would serve no purpose and would not 
survive. So we may say that in a great group of cases illus- 
trating such modes of behavior, nature has had to provide 
not simply a correlation of characters within a single organism, 
but as between two or more different individuals. And we 
come to ask how this extraordinary state of things could have 
been secured. What sort of variations would be required to 
secure and develop native social or gregarious habits? 

It is evident at the outset that the objections to Darwinism 
already stated would hold here with increased force. If 
variations affecting two or more individuals at once, and 
different in character, are required, what is the likelihood of 
their occurring together unless some effect of the actual 
association in life of the individuals be reflected in their 
heredity? And if the facts of correlation present difficulty 
when a single individual's behavior is in question, what does 
the difficulty become in interpreting correlations of characters 
extending to a group ? The inheritance of one of the indi- 
viduals would represent only a part of the required action, 
the other part being bound up in the inheritance of other 
individuals. It would seem that here we have a case in which 
only the actual experiences of the animal's life would give the 
clue to the sort of variations to be found serviceable. 

The resources of Darwinism, as explained above, are ade- 
quate to meet this case also, provided we admit the opera- 
tion of 'organic selection' as described, upon the joint corre- 
lations actually established in life. That is, we must hold 
that the actual life activities keep certain individuals alive in 
associated pairs, groups, etc., the co-ordinated actions being of 
utility, while the individual actions required are gradually 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 3 1 

being molded by variation from generation to generation and 
fitted together for the performance of the joint function. 
In each generation, groups of individuals best fitted for the 
joint action would be formed. Coincident variations would 
accumulate for each type of individual according to the require- 
ments of the gregarious habit. Thus the several types of 
individuals are selected with reference to their ability to play 
each his part 'for the benefit of the community' (Darwin, 
loc. cit., p. 70) 1 , and the whole group is selected because of the 
utility of their cooperation. The united function screens 
and preserves the individuals able to take part in it; and 
while thus screened and preserved, the variations toward its 
better performance are produced, fitted together, and selected. 
It is a further and very important instance of the operation of 
organic selection. 

But here again the utility of the psychological factors comes 
prominently into view. The fact that each of the young, 
through imitation, play, etc., learns the established traditions 
of behavior, adds immensely to the fitness both of the 
individuals and of the group. The young are trained for the 
performance of their essential parts, and their lives are thus 
saved. The group having the largest and most effective tra- 
dition is selected; and with its selection, the variations are 
allowed which again make possible further congenital 
equipment in gregarious lines 2 and the decay of individual 
habits to allow for greater gregariousness. 

1 See Darwin's account of the instincts of ants, especially the 
theory of the origin of 'neutre' ants (Origin of Species, ed. cit., pp. 
354 ff .) . As in other instances, Darwin here chose the hardest possible 
case, as a test of his theory. 

2 Darwin, Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 72, cites man's 'intelligence' 
and 'social qualities' as the characters which take the place of 
"natural weapons, so that it might have been an immense advantage 
to man to have sprung from some comparatively weak creature." 



32 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

We may thus account for all the various perfect, partial 
and imperfect social instincts. Groups of animals show all 
possible stages in the combination of the factors of endowment 
and tradition. The two sorts of heredity, physical and social, 
work hand in hand, the latter taking the lead in marking out 
the direction and affording protection, while the slower 
processes of physical heredity follow in its wake. The result- 
ing state of relative stability and equilibrium varies with the 
actual utilities of the case. In the animals, there is much 
organic and congenital gregarious activity; in man, the physi- 
cal development has culminated in the perfected brain, 1 and 
the 'traditional' mode of handing down is that by which all 
the accretions on the mental side are preserved. 2 

Summing up our conclusions so far with reference to Dar- 
winism in Psychology we may say: 

(i) The individual's learning processes are by a method of 
functional 'trial and error' which illustrates 'natural' in the 
form of 'functional selection.' 

(2) Such acquisitions, taken jointly with his endowment, 
give him the chance of survival through ' natural,' in the form 
of 'organic selection.' 

(3) By his learning, he brings himself into the traditions 
of his group, thus coming into possession of his social heritage, 
which is the means of his individual survival in the processes 
of 'social and group selection.' 

'Darwin quotes with approval Wallace's opinion that man is 
little liable to bodily modifications by natural selection, "for man is 
able through his mental faculties to keep with an unchanged body in 
harmony with a changing universe." Descent of Man, p. 144; see 
also p. 159. 

2 Certain of the general bearings of natural and organic selec- 
tion in the account of social development are well brought out by 
Gulick , Evolution, Racial and Habit udinal (publications of the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington, No. 25). 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 33 

(4) Thus preserved the individual's endowment or physical 
heredity is, through variation, directed in intelligent and 
gregarious lines through 'natural' as 'organic selection.' 

(5) Individuals become congenitally either more gregarious 
or more intelligent for the maintenance of the group life, 
according as the greater utility attaches to one or the other 
in the continued operation of these modes of selection. 

It is thus that a Darwinian foundation is laid for the more 
complex sciences which deal with the development of the 
individual in psychological and social ways. 

77. Genetic Psychology 

The further development of the social sciences requires 
the detailed working out of the methods of individual 
accommodation or learning. This requirement is reflected 
in the recent striking advances made in Genetic Psychology, 
which has two great branches: Comparative and Social 
Psychology. In both of these — that is, in Genetic Psy- 
chology as a whole — important principles have been found at 
work which afford further illustrations of the vitality of 
the Darwinian theory. 

Play. In the play function recent writers, especially 
K. Groos, 1 have discovered one of the instruments of the 
highest utility in the learning process. It is believed to be a 
function by which immature and undeveloped tendencies and 
endowments are practised, in conditions which escape the 
actual struggle and stress of life, and so give the 'trial and 
error' method its full opportunity. Animals play in the line of 
their later activities, and so make themselves proficient for 
the serious struggle for existence. Both the personal and the 
gregarious impulses are thus brought to perfection behind 

1 K. Groos, The Play of Animals, and The Play of Man, both in 
English translation. 



34 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

the screen of play. Play is a generalized native impulse toward 
the exercise of specific and useful activities. It is itself a 
functional character which has arisen by the selection, among 
the individuals of a very great number of animal forms, of 
variations toward the early and artificial use of their growing 
powers. It is a natural and powerful tendency in vigorous 
and growing young; in fact, it is an impulse of extraordinary 
strength and persistence, and of corresponding utility. 

On the psychological side, a corresponding advance has 
been made in the interpretation of the state of 'make-believe,' 
which accompanies and excites to the indulgence of play. 
Make-believe is found in animals of many orders and is strik- 
ingly developed in the child. It leads to a sort of sustained 
imagination of situations, treated as if real — a playful 
'dramatization' — in which the most important principles of 
individual and social life are tentatively and experimentally 
illustrated. Play thus becomes a most important sphere of 
practice, not only on the side of the physical powers, but 
also in intellectual, social, and moral lines. 

Moreover, once learned, this method of experimentation 
by imaginative make-believe is extended, as the individual's 
powers mature, to the more theoretical and voluntary 
functions. Recent work in logic 1 and aesthetics has shown that 
the instrumental or hypothetical characters of knowledge — 
seen in experimental science — and the characters of detach- 
ment and ' semblance' in art, have their roots in this sort of 
imaginative forecasting of what may be or might be true. 

Imitation. The impulse to imitate is the companion to 
that of play. It is the same sort of tendency in type — a native 
generalized activity. It is a sort of social counterpart to the 
play tendency; for by playing in imitative ways young animals 
are brought into fruitful and useful cooperation. The 

1 See chapter iv of this paper below. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 35 

correlation actually holds between them, indeed; animal and 
human plays are both imitative and social. Among the ani- 
mals, both impulses seem to be largely restricted to the activities 
which are to come into play in adult life. With advance in 
the scale of life, however, and especially in the anthropoidal 
and human forms, both become more plastic and more intelli- 
gent, thus allowing them wider application to all the processes 
of learning. In the development of the human individual, 
these two functions, imitation and play, become the principle 
instruments used by nature for the development of the 
individual's native powers, and for leading him into the mass 
of culture called 'social tradition.' This latter province of 
imitation is taken up again below. The actual mechanism 
of both impulses illustrates throughout the Darwinian prin- 
ciple of selection by trial and error. 1 

Origin of the Faculties. Genetic psychology also teaches 
that in the foregoing principles we have in outline an account 
of the origin of the mental faculties as illustrated in the series 
of minds from lower animals up to man. Before man, we 
find the sort of ' profiting by experience' which comes with 
learning through trial and error, and the conservation in 
great habits of the accommodations thus secured. A habit 
is simply a tendency to do again what has once been done, 
whenever the slightest suggestion appears of the original con- 
ditions of action. This suggestion may come through a re- 
newal of the actual conditions, or simply through memory — 

1 Darwin makes interesting remarks in various places on the 
utility of imitation, e.g., Descent of Man, ed. cit., pp. 82, 146. Cf. 
also various titles cited sub verbo in the Diet, of Philosophy. 

The writer's Mental Development contains detailed discussions of 
the place and role of Imitation. I find in what is known as 'per- 
sistent imitation' or 'try- try-again,' in the child, a striking case of 
' trial and error' and learning through that process. The earliest 
cases of volition are of this type, and volition throughout illustrates 
persistent imitation directed upon ideas or ends. 



36 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

whether this be a mere residual or trace of the original func- 
tion, or an actual revived image. The imaging faculty finds 
here its raison d'etre and utility : it enables the animal to utilize 
his earlier experiences in conditions remote in time and place 
from the original situation. 

A further step is taken when images are used experiment- 
ally or instrumentally for purposes of adjustment by trial and 
error, a process for which the play function affords excellent 
opportunity. The child playfully imagines all sorts of situa- 
tions, and experiments upon them with direct utility to him- 
self and his group. 

Finally, in the operations of thought, involving adjustment 
to the common or 'general' aspects of things, this process of 
trial-and-error becomes the conscious and explicit method of 
progress in knowledge and conduct. Among the animals, the 
best authorities find this shown in a rudimentary way in the 
case of the higher anthropoids, which are able, on occasion, to 
readjust a habitual way of action to a somewhat changed 
situation. This has been called 'practical judgment' 1 ; it is 
no doubt a preliminary stage in the development of theoretical 
judgment which uses 'general' ideas. Thus interpreted, the 
operations of thought or 'reason' are shown to be evolved 
from simple processes of accommodation which rest upon trial 
and error and habit. The 'general' idea is a general way of 

1 See Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution. Darwin gives two good 
instances of such procedure, on the part of an elephant and a bear, 
in Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 86. The reader should also look 
up the remarkable passage (ibid., p. 93-4) in which Darwin com- 
pares the dog's attitude toward dogs generally with its changed 
attitude when it discovers 'the other dog to be a friend,' and points 
out the dog's characteristic action of ' searching' for something when 
given the signal to search. Such 'general' actions he thinks denote 
abstract ideas. 



DARWINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 37 

acting upon a mass of details, recognized as requiring the 
same sort of treatment. 1 

The highest functions of thought are thus to be looked upon 
as experimental; they never entirely lose that reference to 
actual situations which shows their origin in the genetic proc- 
esses mentioned. Even the supposedly native or a priori 
principles of knowledge are of the nature of postulates which 
have proved useful in the organization of knowledge; a point 
carried further in chapter iv below. 

As to the actual origin of the different typical 'faculties' 
of the older psychologists — perception, memory, imagination, 
thought— we may look upon them as progressive variations 
in mental endowment, each having its utility, and each in turn 
fixed by selection. There is no difficulty in establishing the 
enormous utility of each of these faculties, as has been inti- 
mated above. We may suppose residual processes left by 
actual experiences serving in their day until established by 
variation in the form of memory. 2 The experimental use of 
memory images, with corresponding success and utility, 

1 Darwin is, indeed, right in saying that such habits of action are 
the active equivalents of abstract ideas; but it is still true, I think, 
that the dog acts spontaneously, not 'reflectively' — that is, he does 
not judge the case to be such and such. The dog's 'abstract' or 
' general" is in a sense quasi-logical ('quasi-rational' in the old sense 
of that term) or 'almost logical;' the fully logical requires a re- 
cognition of the different cases as similar and the judgment that 
justifies common action upon them. 

2 Personally to me this Darwinian way of looking at the origin 
and function of memory is much more reasonable — in the present 
state of the actual evidence at any rate — than the somewhat obscure 
hypothesis of Hering (1870), taken up by Semon and Francis Dar- 
win, to the effect that memory is an original function of organized 
matter, operating as between one generation and another to effect 
the transmission of the effects of experience. See F. Darwin's Pres. 
Address, Brit. Ass., Dublin, 1908; Science, Sept. 18 and 25, 1908; 
and R. Semon, Die Mneme als erhaltendes Princip., etc. (1904). 



38 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

would, be followed in time, by further variations, giving 
imagination and thought. The series of functions of trial 
and error, each in turn projecting its tentative schemes of 
knowledge, would run ahead and be followed by 'coin- 
cident' variations, which would then remain fixed as a per- 
manent part of the mental endowment. The process of 
evolution of psychic function, then, in its great morphological 
stages, shows the same method — that of natural and organic 
selection — found operative in organic evolution generally. 

The opposed theory, represented by the very early and 
theoretically complete exposition of Herbert Spencer's 
Principles of Psychology, should also be recalled: the theory 
which finds in the whole of mental as well as of organic prog- 
ress an exhibition of the accumulation of 'racial experiences' 
solidified and transmitted by direct inheritance. To my 
mind — and I speak principally as a psychologist— the weight 
of present evidence, as well as that of theoretical probability, 
is strongly on the side of the Darwinian interpretation, as 
sketched above. 

It may be noted in passing that, as will appear below, we 
do not find any reason for excepting the 'rational' and 
' spiritual' part of man from this account of human genesis, 
in this agreeing with Darwin against Wallace. The higher 
sentiments and the aspects of temperament called spiritual 
dispositions are, so far as they are congenital, the emotional 
accompaniments of the great stages of knowledge. A 
generalized sentiment goes with a generalized thought. And 
so far as these are not congenital, but acquired in each genera- 
tion, they belong to that great mass of socially transmitted 
tradition which is the spiritual treasure of the race as a whole. 

The analogy is carried farther toward mysticism by Haeckel, who 
says, Darwin and Modern Science, quoting from his paper on 
'Perigenesis' (1876): "Heredity is the memory of the plastidules 
and variability their power of comprehension." 



CHAPTER II. 

DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. 

The Social Sciences have their foundations deep in psychol- 
ogy. A department of the latter is called Social Psychology, 
because of its recognition of the interaction of the two 
human factors, the individual and the social group. In 
Social Psychology and in Sociology the same set of phenom- 
ena are observed, but from the two points of view, respect- 
ively, of the individual's experiences and the experiences or 
activities of the group. Social Psychology asks what the de- 
velopment and life history of the individual's mind owe to its 
social setting, to its place and role in a social order; sociology, 
on the other hand, enquires into the traditions, customs, rites 
and institutions — in general, into the organizations of all sorts 
— in which the common social experiences of the individuals 
are found to issue, when viewed collectively. 

Various formulas have been suggested to bring out the 
fundamental laws under which these two movements, individ- 
ual social development and racial social organization, have 
taken place pari passu; and various attempts have been made 
to state the different genetic stages in the concurrent prog- 
ress of the individual and society. 1 In these attempts, it is 
plain, the general questions of development and evolution 
arise again on a different plane, and require solution in view 
of the fact that in their nature the phenomena are not in a 
strict sense biological, but psychological and social. For 
admitting that the physical individual is subject to biolog- 

1 An instance of this is cited below, in some detail, in the chap- 
ter on Religion (vi). 

39 



40 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

ical laws, it does not follow that the psychological and social 
processes illustrate the same laws, nor even that the action of 
the biological laws may not be in some way modified with the 
entrance upon the field of the mental and social factors. 

It is now widely held that certain of the attempts made to 
apply biological principles directly to social life are crude and 
fallacious. The attempt, for example, very current at one 
time through the influence of Spencer 1 to interpret social 
organization by strict analogy with the physical organism, is 
now discredited. Such a view will not stand before the con- 
sideration of the most elementary psychological principles. 
Each of the modern theories which attempt to define the 
fundamental method of social interaction among individuals 
— identifying it with 'imitation,' 'constraint,' 'contract,' 
'social suggestion,' etc. — each of these cites a psychological 
process that has no direct counterpart or precise analogy in 
the functions of the physical organism. To say that the 
brain corresponds to the ' executive' function of government 
is as grotesque, if used for more than an illustrative figure of 
speech, as it is to say that the priests are the social 'parasites' 
and the police the social 'phagocites.' Why not go over to 
celestial physics and describe the sun as the ' executive officer' 
of the planetary system ? Instead of stopping with the 
identification of the veins and arteries with the system of 
channels of economic distribution, why not go to geography 
and cite the rivers and canals; and having gone so far reduce 
economics to hydraulics ? Give rein to analogy and there is 
no reason to stop with biology. The modes of action of 
mind on mind, indeed, as seen in 'suggestion,' 'obedience,' 
'imitation,' 'self-display,' 'rivalry' and 'social opposition,' 
together with a host of other things that might be named at 
random with equal right, entirely elude this very superificial 
mode of pseudo-explanation. 

1 H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology. 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 4 1 

In order, however, to get more positive light on the 
nature of society for the purpose of estimating Darwin's 
influence in this great division of the humanities, let 
us isolate certain of the problems which the biological and 
social sciences do in fact have in common, and ask whether the 
solution given by the biologists applies to the social and, if so, 
with what modifications. 

These great problems are, first, that of the material or 
matter of social organization; second, that of the method of 
social organization; and, third, that of transmission — the 
problem of 'social progress.' 

Social Matter. To the first of these questions the answer 
in biology is clear enough. Biological matter consists of living 
beings. Biology assumes the mode of organization called 
'vital,' which is identified by certain marks and functional 
processes characteristic of life. The organism furnishes the 
material, and the further work of biology lies in the deter- 
mination of the methods of organization and transmission 
characteristic of this sort of material. Biogenesis — the 
origin of life from life — is its watchword. Biology cannot 
deal with chemical and other a-biogenetic or merely 'bio- 
nomic' processes, although these underly the vital and proceed 
concurrently with it. 

The social matter is not the same; it is not merely vital, 
but something more. It is mental. This is shown by any 
analysis of a social situation. Social ' fitness' is not measured 
by physical characters, but by mental and moral characters. 
We do not find that Mr. Howe's good looks had anything to 
do with the invention or the social utility of his sewing machine, 
nor that the success of the telephone was due to Bell's voice or 
lungs. A great statesman may be blind, deaf, tall, short, or 
bald. The social criteria of fitness are found on the side of 
mental endowments — ability to judge clearly, to act wisely, 



42 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

and to convince others; readiness to follow social precedents 
and to submit to social restraint — all of them social characters 
because, and only because, they are psychical. 

To be convinced of this, we have only to look back upon 
the evolution of mind and society together. There are indeed 
certain very effective and complicated gregarious instincts, 
which have arisen for their biological fitness and utility, and 
are transmitted by physical heredity. But they are contrasted 
somewhat sharply with the forms of human social organiza- 
tion. The former are fixed, stereotyped, relatively perfect and 
relatively unchanging; they must be performed just so 
or not at all. The ' animal company' has little development 
and little flexibility, because its organization is rooted in 
biological structure. But the gradual evolution of the 
mammals, on the contrary, shows the continuous development, 
as we have seen, of the plasticity which goes with mind, accom- 
panied by the breaking up of the biological type of organiza- 
tion and the extension of the psychological. The growth of 
the mind allows the individuals to use their bodies in varied 
and flexible ways for the purposes of intelligent cooperation 
and mutual aid. As the physical type of organization decays, 
the mental and social type at first spontaneous, and later 
on reflective, advances. 

It may be said, indeed, that the mind requires a brain, a 
highly specialized organ with biological functions; and 
this is true. But the function for which the brain itself, a 
highly organized body, is specialized, is just the one that 
releases many of the bodily organs from their biological 
fixities and restricted utilities. By the use of the brain, the 
organism becomes the instrument of mind; its various capaci- 
ties are applied to new and varied uses. The plasticity of 
the brain and nerves is such that, with its increase, the intel- 
lectual and social utilities are increasingly served. 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 43 

This gives, as I conceive it, a sort of selection and survival 
which is quite different from that recognized in the strictly 
biological sciences. We find that the utility to be subserved 
is one of conscious cooperation and union among individuals; 
and the unit whose selection is to secure this utility must 
have the corresponding characters. This unit is not the 
individual, but a group of individuals who show in common 
their gregarious or social nature in actual exercise; each is 
selected in company with certain others, who survive with him 
and for the same reason. Thus the selective unit, considered 
from the external or social point of view, is a group of individ- 
uals, greater or smaller as the utility subserved may require; 
and from the point of view of the subjective or psychic process 
it implies the mental attitude which brings the individual 
into useful cooperation. Calling this latter the 'personal' 
aspect of social fitness, we may define it by using the term 
'socius.' The psychological unit is a 'socius,' a more or 
less socialized individual, fitted to enter into fruitful social 
relations. And the objective requirement remains that of a 
group of such individuals making up a social situation. 
These two conceptions become, then, the watchwords of our 
evolutionary social psychology and sociology respectively — 
the 'socius' and the 'social situation.' 

The Socius. In the qualities of the socius or socialized 
individual, we have the type of personal fitness upon which 
the qualifications of the group for survival will depend. Only 
so far as the individuals of a group are 'socii,' members cap- 
able of cooperation and willing to cooperate with their fellows, 
will the group 'hold together' effectively, in competition with 
other groups. The effect of further selection, therefore, 
must be to fix the social characters of the individual, and, 
through this effect, to perfect the organization within the 
group, which will, in turn, fit the group as a whole to survive 



44 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

in the competitions of group with group. This means that 
there are now two spheres of selection, one that of 'intra- 
group' selection, or ' social selection' proper, acting to socialize 
the individuals within the group; the other that of 'inter- 
group' selection, acting to preserve the most socialized group 
in competition with other groups. 

In the former of these, working as it does to develop the 
'socius,' there is the gradual elimination of the more individ- 
ualistic characters, both physical and mental. The empha- 
sis has been placed more and more on physical plasticity, 
with high brain endowment, and upon the corresponding 
social educability, with imitativeness, docility and self-control. 
Thus the average man has become a fairly socialized, 
properly restrained, and competent member of the group. 
Even the processes of social elimination and destruction are 
handed over to the agents of society — the police, the courts, 
and the hangman. In fact, so far are the processes of direct 
physical competition superseded by the more intelligent, but, 
from the physical point of view, less effective, social agencies, 
that even the intermarriage of incompetents and diseased 
persons is not only prevented; but these undesirable per- 
sons are artificially kept alive ! Only the one qualification 
of fitness is insisted upon: the socius must live within the 
bounds of established social usage and convention. 

As to what the properly social processes of selection and 
progress are, to that we are to return. Here it may suffice to 
note that, by the operation of selection, resulting in the evolu- 
tion of plasticity and mind, the Darwinian factor of personal 
competition on the basis of egoistic and individualistic char- 
acters has undergone essential modification. As a general 
thing, in society we do not fight physically for our rights; on 
the contrary, we appeal for their enforcement to the consti- 
tuted social agencies of the rights of all. And it is not for 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 45 

individual and personal rights as such that we make the appeal, 
but for the rights that are socially generalized and common. 

But while the strictly Darwinian principle of struggle and 
survival is thus revised within the group, it still remains 
operative upon the larger units, the groups themselves. 
'Group-struggle' takes the place of 'individual struggle'; 1 
and as we will see below, the law of struggle or competi- 
tion takes on peculiar and interesting forms in the process 
of social evolution itself. 

The Social Situation. By this term we mean the more or 
less effective organization within a group, which it brings to 
the competition or struggle with other groups. In war, for 
example, and in the competition of civilization with civiliza- 
tion, whatever forms that competition may take on, what 
is necessary is not merely the fitness of individuals, but the fit- 
ness also of the type of 'solidarity' 2 represented in their social 
life. The poorly organized and more individualistic groups go 
to the wall before the more effectively organized and socialized. 
The society that does not suppress its own criminals need not 
expect to win the competitions of race with race. Corrup- 
tion in administration means ineffectiveness in equipment. 
This has now become a commonplace of social science. It 
illustrates the transfer of the incidence of fitness and selection 
from the individual to the group, from the individualistic to 
the collective type of utility. But at the same time, within 
the group, the social forces as such are at work, selecting, 
educating, and refining the ' socius' of the group. ' Personal 
cooperation' and 'group selection,' then, become the corner- 
stones of the more critical and adequate social philosophy 
which utilizes the Darwinian principle of selection. The 
use of these conceptions has largely, and should completely, 

1 Bagehot, Physics and Politics, emphasizes this point. 
2 On Social 'Solidarity', see vol. xii of the Annates de V Institut 
Int. de Sociologie (discussions by several writers, Paris, 19 10). 



46 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

supersede the application directly to society of vague and 
superficial biological and physical analogies. 1 

Coming then to the second of our questions under this 
general heading, we have to ask as to the methods of organiza- 
tion found respectively within and without the social group. 
As to the latter, we have just seen that the group becomes 
the unit of selection because it contains within it an effective 
social situation, and that selection on the basis of the struggle 
of group with group is its method. Waiving the further con- 
sideration of the latter aspect of the question of organization, 
except indeed to note its strictly Darwinian character, we 
may now enquire into the nature of the organization, within 
the group itself, which fits it to survive. 

The Social Self. Recalling the fact stated above that, 
from the psychological point of view, it is the individual's sense 
of his place in a social situation and his ability to fill his 
place and perform his role in the situation that makes him a 
socius and a valuable member of a group — recalling this, we 
may describe social 'progress' as simply the advancing 
organization due to the more and more conscious, deliberate 
and effective participation of the individual in the current 
social life. The individual must represent and seek to enforce 
in his place and station the normal and conventional set of 
established social values. He must be a self-controlled and 
ready social instrument, whatever his part may be in the 
work of the whole. All the institutional and pedagogical 
agencies of society are exercised to the end of making each 
member an informed and conforming social fellow or ' socius.' 
Each man must absorb, by a long and wearisome course of 
instruction and discipline, the social traditions of his race and 
group. 

1 Darwin, in his last edition, recognized Group Selection as 
involving organization within the group. See Descent of Man, ed. 
cit., p. 150. He had then read Bagehot's remarkable book, Physics 
and Politics (1874), which he cites with admiration. 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 47 

To this end the quasi-instinctive social tendencies of the 
human child, such as bashfulness, love of display, imitation 
and play, are of the first importance. It has been held with 
vigor and force that if any one impulse is quite indispensable 
to the training of social character it is that of imitation. 
Apart from the attempt to construe the essential social process 
in terms of imitation, narrowly understood, psychology has 
now vastly extended the range of psychic processes which, 
genetically considered, may be described as imitative in their 
type; and we may say that imitation — understood to include 
its products and derivatives as well as its mere method — is 
the root of the socializing process. 1 Both the individual's 
essential learning of what is necessary to his social competence, 
and also the propagation from one individual to another of 
what all must know, with its discussion and generalization in 
social institutions — all of these are kept in operation by 
processes which are essentially imitative. In play, too, 
broadly understood, we have, as has been imtimated above, 
an engine of very great effectiveness. It is not to be confined 
to the merely sportive or gaming tendencies, although in child- 
hood this has great social utility. But in the playful exercise 
of the faculties of discussion, in make-believe, in mock co- 
operation, in playful competition, playful struggle and 
rivalry of every sort, we have this great socializing factor 
doing its proper work. 2 

1 Discussions of imitation in its social bearings are by Bagehot, 
Physics and Politics; Tarde, The Laws of Imitation (Eng. Trans.); 
Bosanquet, Phil. Theory of the State; Baldwin, Social and Ethical 
Interpretations, 4ed. (which contains discussions of bashfulness and 
self-exhibition); Royce, Studies in Good and Evil; W. McDougall, 
Introduction to Social Psychology. 

2 Bashfulness also passes from the instinctive stage into modesty, 
shame, and sexual timidity and reserve; and in self-exhibition or dis- 
play many find one of the springs of art, coordinate with imitation 
(cf. the writer's article, 'The Springs of Art/ Philosophical Review, 
May, 1909.) 



48 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

It all results in the development of a fit social self, by what- 
ever terms we may describe and name the subordinate men- 
tal processes that contribute to the result. The individual 
grows to understand himself and his fellows in social terms. 
We have quite given up the old abstraction of an anti-social 
self, an individualistic and egoistic person, who was sup- 
posed to be always on the lookout for means of injuring his 
fellows. On the contrary, social psychology shows that the 
'self of the individual's ' self -consciousness' is, in its mate- 
rials and processes of formation, thoroughly social in its 
origin. Each normally educated person is a 'socius,' born of 
social life and coming, through his early education, directly 
and naturally into his social heritage. His earliest judg- 
ments and his latest inventions are alike socially supported 
and socially tried out. He succeeds, when he does, in mak- 
ing himself unsocial, only by a process of deliberate self- 
seeking or by an equally artificial isolation, and even then 
nature often gets the upper hand and shows him what a poor 
and miserable individual he is capable of being when he seeks 
to dwell alone. The naturally unsocial and anti-social 
individuals are abnormal and exceptional cases. 

The social individual, indeed, is the product of the social 
life. He embodies and stands for the type of organization 
which his group preserves in the struggle with other types. 
The body of Frenchmen, for example, must be brought up as 
Frenchmen, and the body of Englishmen as Englishmen, if 
what is distinctive in these great civilizations is to be preserved. 
And it is as much a part of the self-consciousness of each of 
these, respectively, that he is a Frenchman or an English- 
man, as it is that he is personally A, the farmer, or B , the black- 
smith. 

Social Transmission and Progress. It is, however, in 
answer to the question of social progress and its method that 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 49 

the social sciences find themselves obliged to make the most 
far-reaching reservations in respect to the application of bio- 
logical principles to their material. For here we go over to the 
realm of the psychological pure and simple, although biologi- 
cal laws are assumed to have established a relatively stable 
basis for the characteristic operations of mind. The truth of 
this is shown in the status of certain great problems which 
are of such moment that when they are solved the more 
detailed questions are also answered in principle. 

In the two principles now firmly established, that of the 
'social inheritance' of social matter, without physical trans- 
mission, on the one hand, and that of the psychological origin 
and propagation of social variations in the form of inventive 
ideas and original thoughts, on the other hand — with these 
principles firmly rooted in the field of mental forces and 
results, we care not what the biologist may say unto us. And 
yet, when again, in this field, we have banished superficial 
analogy and the cheap deductions of the man who is bent 
on 'discounting' the mind, we find ourselves led to employ 
conceptions which, if viewed as logical instruments and 
philosophical principles, are those set store by in the works 
of Darwin. 

The fact of social transmission has, in recent literature, been 
transformed from the mere commonplace of ordinary obser- 
vation to the careful statement of social law. It is fully recog- 
nized that psychological acquirements, the results of prac- 
tice in action and the acquisitions of knowledge, are embodied 
in social regulations and conventions, and are not inherited 
through the physiological organism. There is a process of 
actual re-acquisition from generation to generation. This 
does not, of course, involve actual re-discovery or the full 
re-living of the experiences, since that would be too laborious 
and haphazard. The function of society which is correlated 



50 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

with the educability of the child comes in here: the function of 
administering, again and again, in each generation, by the 
agencies of instruction and discipline, the accumulated lore of 
the ages gone by. It becomes necessary that each child who 
is to run a good social race should be trained in the funda- 
mentals of social knowledge and instructed in the essentials 
of social behavior. He must learn how to use the great social 
instruments, language, writing, science. He grows to be a 
'socius', in the sense above described, by the absorption of 
the social tradition. 

It thus appears that the great mass of essential social 
matter escapes the limitations of physical heredity. It is 
enough that by physical reproduction the fit candidate for 
the social heritage be provided. 

Social Change and Variation. The other great requisite of 
progress is, of course, some source of change, of social varia- 
tion, to use the Darwinian term. As in social heredity we 
have the conserving factor, whereby the stored acquisitions of 
the race are re-administered to all and so remain in available 
form, so here we must seek the principle of production of the 
novelties through which advance is secured. 

Here we are again on distinctly psychological ground. In 
a sense, of course, the genius, the inventive thinker, is a 
physical variation; he comes as a child of his parents, and of his 
parents only. But there are two ways in which our theory of 
the inventive thinker must supplement this biological account 
of his origin. In the first place, the variations he represents 
are variations in brain and mind. His heredity determines 
them, for it is by marriage that his mental and physical 
hereditary strains are alike brought into union; but given 
the thinker, the babe intellectually well-born, the child of 
fortune and of future greatness, and the battle is still but half 
won. The social forces must now take him up and make him 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 5 1 

socially productive. He must be trained in the matter and 
methods of effective thought and action. He must be normal 
in the main, if he is to become more than normal in his achieve- 
ments and contributions to the social store. For this is the 
nature of the productive social variations. They are of the 
nature of fruitful thoughts, proposals, measures suggested for 
adoption by the social body. The mind of the great thinker 
is, of course, the first requisite to each advance made by 
society; but even his thoughts must be tempered by sane 
judgment trained in the social conformities. 1 And after all, 
the main movement of progress comes by the smaller accre- 
tions, the modifications wrought out by the thinking minds 
of lesser caliber than that of genius. 

Indeed, we find reinstated here, in the world of ideas, a 
curious form of struggle for existence, a competition of 
ideas to survive. Every new thought, no matter how valu- 
able in the result, has to pass the gauntlet of social acceptance 
no less than that of actual truth and availability. The indi- 
vidual 'particularizes' the new ideas; the common people of 
the social group 'generalize' and apply them. Here, as 
Bagehot said, the function of 'discussion' comes in. It is a 
sort of meeting place of ideas, the theatre of competition 
among thoughts and inventions, in which the fittest, the most 
reasonable or plausible, survive in the custom, law, and prac- 
tice of society. 2 ' The individual mind, then, is the source of 
the new variations, the new items of mental production, which 
are of possible availability; while society is the mental and 
moral environment to which the new thoughts must show 
their adaptation. In this sense there is a real application of 
the Darwinian conception; but it is an intrinsic applica- 

1 See appendix A, on 'Darwin's Judgment.' 

2 Tarde uses the analogy of 'thinking' or logical process for this 
fitting together or assimilation of ideas in the social whole; see his 
work, La Logique sociale. 



52 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

tion, operating in its own way under peculiar conditions; it is 
not at all the taking over of a biological principle. 

The essentially sui generis character of social transmission 
and propagation of mental material in social progress suggests 
another difference between its working and that of physical 
heredity. It is evident that the extension of an idea in social 
acceptance and belief is not limited to certain individuals, but 
may run its course with any degree of celerity and complete- 
ness. A month, a week, a day may suffice for the general 
recognition of a new thought in the social group. And this 
process, instead of encountering limitations, is furthered 
by certain psychological motives. Beliefs are contagious, 
ideas run from mind to mind, imitation produces sameness 
and conformity to the established. All these movements, 
quite psychological in character, stand in contrast to the slow 
processes by which biological characters become established. 1 
The latter must submit to the limitations and reductions of 
reproduction by a single pair of parents, only the one pair and 
possibly only the one parent at first showing the new variation. 
Even in the most favorable biological case, that now called 
* mutation' and known by the successors of Darwin 2 as 'salta- 
tion,' in which a large or well-marked 'sport' variation 
appears, the character in question must still be bred into the 

1 Darwin says that a man by an act of sacrifice may through 
the example he sets ' do far more good to his tribe than by begetting 
offspring.' Descent of man, ed. cit., p. 149. 

2 " Strongly marked deviations of structure, which occur only at 
long intervals of time." Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 3. Galton's theory 

of ' sports' recognized the same instances. See F. Galton, Natural 
Inheritance. The authoritative exposition of the new theory of muta- 
tion is to be found in De Vries' The Mutation Theory; see also the 
Darwin memorial volumes. Darwin, Origin, ed. cit., pp. 313 ff,, 
anticipates it and urges strong objections to it. In my opinion, as an 
account of the origin of species, even among plants, it is very far 
from being proved. 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 53 

race by actual reproduction under the limitations of the 
laws of physical heredity. 

It may be said again, of course, that this is a case of a bio- 
logical law applied to sociology — a variation propagating itself 
because it is fit. Certainly; but the conditions and principles 
of such propagation are so different and characteristic in the 
two cases, that neither can be used for more than a 
suggestive analogy to the other. What is common to the 
two is the essential thought of Darwin's natural selection. 
There is a selection under conditions of over-production 
and this is 'natural,' the result following simply and entirely 
from the conditions of the competition. 

We have to conclude, then, that the Darwinian principle has 
application in the sphere of social organization and progress. 
But it is not because this principle is biological, nor is it opera- 
tive in its biological form. The truth is that Darwin struck 
upon a law of such universal application in nature, in both 
spheres, vital and mental, that we can apply it to much 
that is common to these two sciences. The differences 
within what is common however extend to further details in 
certain directions, and illustrate contrasts between the socio- 
logical and biological conceptions, notably in the matter of 
'struggle for existence.' In the social sciences, this shows 
itself in the various forms of competition and rivalry. 

Struggle and Competition. It is a remarkable fact that the 
idea of 'struggle for existence,' an idea which supplies an 
essential link in the 'chain of the Darwinian theory, was 
suggested to him by Malthus' book on population. Wal- 
lace was influenced by Malthus in much the same way. 1 

Malthus' suggestive and fruitful thought was in effect this 

'The ever-memorable 'Essay on the Principle of Population,' 
Darwin, Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 50. Wallace has himself 
described the way in which Malthus supplied to him "the long- 
sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of organic species," 
in his My Life, A Record of Events and Opinions, i, pp, 232, 361. 



54 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

without some eliminating agency, said he, — some ' Malthusian 
factor' as it has since been called — over-population would be 
produced and this would result in scarcity of food, the pro- 
duction not keeping up with the increased demand. Over- 
population would then result in a struggle for the means 
of life. Malthus pointed out various ' checks' on population 
by which this is prevented. Taken literally, of course, the 
simplest case of this would be in the animal world, where 
simple appetite would impel the individuals to contend with 
one another whenever food was not abundant. Darwin saw 
that this was realized in animal nature. The animals are not 
only constantly fighting for their food, but they are equipped 
with weapons of offense and defense, seemingly provided 
for this express purpose. And the idea is near at hand, as the 
case of Darwin and Wallace both demonstrate, that it is 
through such a 'struggle' that the fittest survive, and that 
the relatively well defended and strong have been evolved. 

This we may consider as the strictly ' Darwinian' sort of 
struggle for existence; for although suggested by an economist, 
it is nevertheless this form of competition that finds its evident 
application in the relatively simple biological conditions 
assumed by Darwin, where the psychological factors as such 
do not play a conspicuous part. This we may call, under- 
stood literally, ' struggle for food' or struggle for sustenance — 
struggle, that is, for the means of life. 

When we come, however, to broaden our outlook and to 
examine the examples actually given by the two great apostles 
of natural selection themselves, we find certain variations 
from this simple condition of struggle for food. Food is not 
all that the mere animal wants. Darwin recognized that the 
other great instincts and appetites also lead to struggle for their 
satisfaction. In his emphasis on Sexual Selection he recog- 
nized the force and critical character of the reproductive 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 55 

instinct which leads to the struggle of the males for females. 1 
Even the struggle for food takes on a complicated character 
when we recognize that the 'food' in question may be another 
animal; for the prey must 'put up' the most intense sort of 
struggle to escape. It is not struggle for food to him, but 
struggle to escape being made into food ! It is a struggle for 
life with him. Indeed we find a great class of characters in 
nature that serve just this end, characters of defense, of con- 
cealment, of rapid locomotion, of cunning and make-believe, 
all providing for escape, in this form or that. Under this 
heading, too, we must place the struggle not against other 
animals, other living enemies, but against nature itself — 
against rigorous climate, and disease — against all the forces 
of the environment to which any relative maladjustment 
would terminate fatally. This is a ' struggle to live,' 2 

Both these cases of struggle for existence — 'struggle for 
food' and ' struggle to live' — are illustrated in the more com- 
plex conditions with which the social sciences have to deal. 
Every individual who has to make his living, whether with his 
hands or with his brain, or with both together, is having a 
struggle for food. And in our fight against cold, climate and 
disease, we are also struggling to live. Indeed, about the 
only form of danger leading to struggle for existence, in this 

1 Although announced in the Origin of Species, the principle of 
Sexual Selection received more detailed treatment and greater 
emphasis in the Descent of Man, the full title of which is The 
Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The principle of 
Sexual Selection is coming into juster recognition as accounting for 
the 'secondary' sexual character. See Weismann, in Darwin and 
Modern Science, pp. 42 ff . 

2 Darwin discusses the human struggle for existence with 
reference to the Malthusian 'checks on population,' in Descent of 
Man, ed. cit., pp. 50 ff. In the Origin of Species, ed. cit., vol. i, 
p. 78, he clearly distinguishes the two forms of struggle mentioned 
in the text. 



56 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

individualistic sense, that the modern human individual 
escapes is that of being eaten up by his fellow-man. Canni- 
balism is done away with, at least in good society. But there 
are mosquitoes and parasites still to feed upon us; and in the 
most cultivated circles we run risks of having our substance 
devoured even though our persons be safe. 

We may say, on the whole, that the cruder forms of struggle 
for existence in the biological sense, the forms that depend 
upon physical offense and defense, are largely done away 
with when we come to the stage of active social cooperation. 
In rude societies, it survives in the indulgence of the coarser 
emotions and passions which are not yet reduced to the form 
in which they serve social use rather than private gratifica- 
tions. Private revenge, for example, and lynch law remain 
in some communities. Some forms of direct struggle survive 
too on account of the countenance they continue to have in 
actual social sanction, during the slow processes of the evolu- 
tion of the agencies of social control and law. But coopera- 
tion within the group is really the final enemy to these sorts 
of individualism; and we find that it is outside the group, in 
the realm of inter-group selection, that the struggle remains 
one of direct life-and-death competition. War we still have 
with us, and also the protective tariff, the exclusion of aliens 
from our food and labor markets, etc., all devices for provid- 
ing for our own people regardless of what effect this may have 
upon other people who are in fact just as human and just 
as hungry as we are. 

It is fair to say, therefore, that there is a progressive sup- 
pression within the group of the grosser, more biological forms 
of struggle for existence, progressing with the advance in 
social cooperation and organization; but that they still find 
illustration in the struggle which a social group as a unit 
wages with other similar units or groups. Even here, how- 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 57 

ever, the struggle tends to be waged with other than physical 
weapons. The growth of mind, making the group organiza- 
tion evermore effective, shows itself efficient also in the foreign 
relations of the group. War and all other sorts of racial 
rivalry become as much struggle of wits as struggle with 
hands and guns. In war the sting of defeat is not measured 
by numerical loss of men, but by the humiliation of national 
pride and the loss of racial prestige. The costliness of 
victory contributes to the pride and glory of its achievement. 

These considerations may introduce us to the form of 
struggle for existence which is distinctly psychological in 
character, and which does not allow of any sort of biological 
explanation. Let us call this 'rivalry,' including in it all 
forms of competition, both individual and social, in which 
psychological factors play the essential role. 

Rivalry. The test of rivalry, so defined, is to be found in 
its motive and end. In biological struggle we have either the 
end of personal existence, ministered to by appetite, passion, 
and self-defense, or that of racial continuance, the end of 
physical reproduction. Biological cooperations, even, when 
strictly interpreted, have one or both of these ends. In- 
dividual animals live to propagate, and the species prop- 
agates to live. This is the circle of biological ends. The 
male bird does not understand the motive of his courtship 
antics, but the end is there just the same; the female may not 
know why she builds the nest, but she is conforming to racial 
ends. The immediate gratification of impulse and instinct 
forwards the biological process. 

But when we come to psychological, social and moral 
rivalry these things are not so. In a word, social utility tends 
to replace that of instinct: a statement which our own 
detailed explanation will justify. We say to a man: 'You 
are, of course, an animal, but do not allow yourself to be 



58 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

one.' We enter here upon a world of what we may call 
'mental and moral motives and ends, 'which are not exhausted 
in those of the biological order. 

If we proceed to ask in what respects the social person 
comes into rivalry with his fellows, we find all sorts of situa- 
tions which can be described only in psychological terms. 
He acts from motives of display, advancement, prestige, 
reputation, gain, happiness, honor, all terms which represent 
a sort of end that cannot be identified with mere continuance 
or propagation of physical life. Even the most directly 
egoistic and utilitarian conduct by which one may compete 
with his fellows, is partly motived by social considerations. 
The merchant seeks wealth not for mere food or mere life, 
but for family prestige and for the larger social amenities. 
The banker gives a fine dinner not to gratify his appetite or 
that of his guests, but to show forth 'his own glory,' a motive 
of such dignity that it was attributed to the Creator by the 
Westminster divines. Rivalry, then, as varied as its motive 
may be, is, negatively at least, so to be described: it is not 
exhausted by the biological struggle for existence, understood 
either in individual or in gregarious terms. 

This appears, also, when we consider the sort of environ- 
ment in which personal and social rivalry is fought out. It 
is not a contest to show physical fitness, to effect adaptation to 
physical conditions, or to meet physical tests. It is rather 
aimed to meet the conditions of social and moral utility. It is 
the environment of society itself, not that of the physical 
earth and its forces, for which the successful rival must show 
his relative fitness. He must convince men, persuade women, 
forecast demand, provide supply, anticipate economic and 
industrial movements, discount beliefs, and weigh customs. 
This is the arena of social rivalries and advancements. The 
contest turns upon the individual's personal adjustment to 



DARWINISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 59 

social situations, upon his attitude toward social institutions 
and his will to acknowledge them, not upon his place or 
function in the scale of physical life. 

Not stopping to dwell upon details, we may consider this 
as the essential difference between the two cases. Within the 
group, the rivalries are those which presuppose a social and 
moral order, and require motives in the individual to meet the 
demands of such an order. And within this order itself are 
to be found the criteria of fitness and selection, with the cor- 
responding means of elimination, of the socially and morally 
unfit. For there is here also something corresponding to the 
elimination found in the biological order; there is a social 
suppression of the socially unfit. For this, society develops 
weapons to use against its own members. In social ostracism, 
the boycott, the jail, the reformatory, the asylum and the 
gallows, we have society's means of suppression or elimination. 
But this is again different from biological elimination, just 
as a conscious, deliberate motive differs from a blind biological 
impulse. We do not kill off the criminals or the insane indis- 
criminately in a fit of rage, simply because we are able to do 
so or feel so disposed; but we deliberately hang or confine 
them because we judge them, together with their activities and 
tendencies, to be injurious to society. It is not an automatic 
elimination, the outcome of mere struggle as in biology; it is, 
on the contrary, a conscious process of banishing the socially 
unfit. 1 The new science of Eugenics, having as god-father one 
of the verteran Darwinians of England, Sir Francis Galton, is 
founded upon the possibility of carrying further in a sys- 
tematic way this intentional improvement of the race, by the 

*It is true also, as Lloyd Morgan has pointed out, that individ- 
ual conscious selection seeks positively the best, instead of merely 
neglecting the worst; but individual choice is so variable that this 
seems to be a very uncertain factor. 



60 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

artificial' selection or elimination of individuals who are 
respectively fit or unfit, either physically or socially. It in- 
volves the direct application to human life of Darwin's 
'methodical' selection — the systematic selection by man with 
an end in view. 

In this matter of rivalry in general, then, we find the main 
Darwinian method of selection and progress again exempli- 
fied, but not in a way that simply applies the biological princi- 
ple to social facts. On the contrary, the principle is widened. 
It finds different, though analogous, application in these two 
great fields of knowledge. Biological struggle is the means of 
selection for purposes of life in a physical and vital environ- 
ment; its conditions are those of the organic order; its quali- 
fications those of physical fitness. Social rivalry, on the 
other hand, is the means of selection for mental and moral 
purposes, personal, economic, etc., in the environment of a 
social order; its qualifications are social and moral. 1 

I have used the word - moral' above in a general sense, seem- 
ing to slur its distinctive import and to identify it entirely with 
the social. We have found a world, an environment, of 
physical facts and values, requiring a certain sort of fitness, 
and also a world or environment of social facts and values; 
how far, and in what sense, we may now ask, do these exhaust 
what is known distinctively as the world of ' moral' or ' ethical' 
facts and values ? 

1 Similar reservations in respect to the use of the biological 
analogy in literary science are made in the valuable papers of 
Prof. J. P. Hoskins in Modern Philology, April and July, 1909. 

Below, in this paper, p. 74 ff, under 'Community,' a further 
word is said on the bearing of the selection theory on the sciences of 
politics and government. Darwin sums up his views on social prog- 
ress as follows {Descent of Man, ed. cit. p. 162) : "The more efficient 
causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth, 
while the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence 
inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, cus- 
toms, and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion." 



CHAPTER III. 

DARWINISM AND ETHICS. 1 

The name of Huxley comes to mind as we approach this 
topic. The controversy excited by his Romanes lecture, 
entitled Evolution and Ethics, will be recalled by many of 
my readers. One of the champions of Darwinism here 
deserted the colors, for Huxley held that in our ' moral sense' 
we have a principle of altruism and a rule of conduct that 
directly contravene the principle of 'struggle for existence;' 
morality could not have had its origin, said he, in the working 
of this principle, considered as issuing in the survival of the 
fittest. 

We are now prepared, however, to find that Huxley was 
wrong. 

Huxley did not appreciate the fact that there are stages of 
transition between biological struggle and social rivalry, 
between the physical fitness required for the one and the social 
fitness required for the other. So soon as we see that the 
fitness of the group for its struggle requires organization within 
the group, and this in turn requires a socialized rather than an 
egoistic individual, then the difficulty disappears. Utility for 
the group presupposes self-control and altruism in the individual. 
It is the extension of the application of natural selection to 
groups, rather than its direct application to individuals, that 
has given birth to morals. So the Darwinian principle is 

1 Prof. Tufts discusses this topic in the Darwin Number of the 
Psychological Review, May, 1909. 

Darwin's views on the origin of morals are to be found in 
ch. iv of the Descent of Man: See his brief resume on pp. 149 to 
150 (ed. cit.) 

61 



62 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

preserved. 1 The theater of competitions is the social order, 
not the physical environment; and the interests of that order 
are the first and essential utilities. Morality has arisen 
because it is socially useful; that is the Darwinian account. An 
intelligent altruism is a better type of life for social purposes 
than a stark egoism; and the better type has prevailed and 
will prevail. 

To this result several steps are found necessary; and these 
we may now take, using, as in the earlier sections, the catch- 
words of current theory: Social Control, Self-Restraint, Altru- 
ism, Duty. 

Social Control. The preservation of a group depends upon 
the character of its inner organization. This requires, in the 
interest of the whole, the subordination and regulation of 
the individuals. Such regulation is what is called 'social 
control.' It is the control of society over its members by 
all its agencies, executive, educational, penal, etc. It 
extends to all the social arrangements: to custom, tradition, 
law, with their sanctions — legal, conventional, pedagogical — 
exercised for the constraint of the individuals and the sup- 
pression of the capricious and anti-social. The constabu- 
lary is the instrument of social control on the lower plane, the 
judiciary on the higher. 

Self-restraint. The progress of society, however, is not lim- 
ited to the merely external or repressive modes of enforcement 
which the exercise of direct social control alone would create; 

1 It is really astonishing that Huxley did not see this, for 
Darwin's own exposition is fundamentally based upon this dis- 
tinction. He heads his collection of cases (pp. 132 f ) with the 
legend, 'The Strictly Social Virtues at First alone Regarded;' and 
in the discussion we find these words: "Actions are regarded 
by savages . as good or bad solely as they affect the welfare 
of the tribe — not that of the species, nor that of an individual" 
(P- 135)- 



DARWINISM AND ETHICS 63 

nor is this adequate to produce morality. There is the corre- 
lated process of development, in the individual, of personal 
control or self-restraint. It is due, we have seen, to the social 
character of personal development as such. Each person is 
educated to be a ' socius,' self-trained in the duties and obli- 
gations, as well as in the rights and privileges, attaching to the 
essential social situations of life. This sort of training is 
reflected in the kind of sanity of social judgment which we 
call 'practical' or 'moral.' It requires the voluntary subordina- 
tion of the individualistic to the common interest. It is not 
a distinct faculty; it is simply the sense of social fitness and 
value become habitual, natural and obligatory to the individ- 
ual. It represents, on the whole, the socially useful : the type 
of conduct which has behind it the enforced sanctions of the 
social discipline and control of the race. The child's 'self,' 
being socially molded, is a self whose normal practice should 
issue in socially established channels: and this 'should' 
becomes, when self-legislating in the individual, his ethical 
'ought.' 

Apart from points of further philosophical discussion, we 
may accept this answer to the question of the genesis and 
meaning in evolution of the individual's conscience. It is a 
form of self-restraint and self-direction which follows upon 
and in turn enforces outwardly sanctioned social constraint 
and direction. It is the normal personal self coming into its 
social heritage of rights and duties and recognizing its place 
and status. Its ideal is personal consistency and self-direc- 
tion; but its discipline and guidance are social and its rules 
are those produced and sanctioned by social utility. The 
moral genius, like the inventive genius, produces variations — 
in this case ideas looking toward practical reform and 
change — but these are selected, in turn, for their social fitness 
and value. 



64 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

This account of morals is, of course, Darwinian in spirit. 1 
It shows the moral faculty to be genetically due to the reflec 
tion and grounding, in a socially developed self or person, of 
the rules of organization found fit in social life under condi- 
tions of group competition. 

Altruism. The stumbling-block to Huxley was the altru- 
ism of the moral life. How can consideration of others super- 
sede self-seeking, if a struggle for individual existence — an 
' eye for an eye', a ' tooth and claw' struggle — is the rule or 
law of survival? But we now see that the biological and 
individualistic sort of struggle does not represent the method 
of social selection. Struggle to be or to become effective 
and successful units or socii in an organization of self-con- 
trolled individuals — that is the proper form of statement. 
This involves the voluntary cooperation of individuals in the 
social situation. So all the egoistic and self-seeking impulses 

1 1 have elsewhere stated what I believe to be the lack in Darwin's 
theory, as expounded in chap, iv of the Descent of Man. He 
finds morality too early, genetically, I think, taking its roots (social 
instinct, sympathy, etc.) for the thing itself, and not recognizing 
sufficiently the higher elements of self-determination and reflective 
judgment which develop naturally out of these roots. I think it is the 
reflective determination of alternatives of conduct that distinguishes 
a man's 'conscientiousness,' to use Darwin's term, from the dog's. 

We should hardly expect Darwin to work out distinctions which 
the professed psychologist and moralist find it necessary to develop. 
Yet in such passages as the following the true note seems to be 
struck. He says (loc. cit., p. 126): "A moral being is one who 
is capable of comparing his past and future actions, and of approv- 
ing or disapproving of them." It is the ' approving ' and 'disap- 
proving,' of which we wish a fuller account. 

Cf. the writer's Social and Ethical Interpretations, Chap, ii; and 
see Tufts on 'Darwin and Evolutionary Ethics,' in the Darwin 
Number, May, 1909, of the Psychological Review. Other works on 
evolution ethics are Schurman's The Ethical Import of Darwinism, 
and (of especial value) Alexander's Moral Order and Progress. The 
social grounding of ethics is ably advocated in L. Stephens' The 
Science of Ethics. 



DARWINISM AND ETHICS 65 

and propensities must be inhibited in the adjustments of 
justice, fraternity, and right. It is the person as such, the 
socialized self, upon whom the fittest conduct must terminate 
and in whom it must originate, whether, in this case or that, 
it be embodied in one's own interests or in the interests of 
others. Sympathy and altruism are the socialized and trans- 
formed impulses of the growing individual, who is educated 
into a higher selfhood; egoism and self-love must undergo 
this transformation. 

Duty. Duty is the sense of this requirement, as one's own 
socially built-up nature utters it. It is my duty to be con- 
sciously a social instrument — the representative of the socially 
best — the most fit person I can be; and since this is reflected in 
my conscience it is my duty in general to obey my conscience. 
But with this must go my best insight, my most informed 
reflection. From the point of view of society, altruism in 
spirit is always useful; but it is not always duty. Reflective 
judgment and deliberate foresight for the good of the whole — 
nothing short of this is one's duty. 

It is not my intention to develop ethical theory here; but to 
show in what way Darwin's general point of view works up 
into ethics through sociology. Once granted the origin of 
society by selective processes, with standards of group-utility 
replacing those of biological and individual utility, and the 
objection to Darwinism in ethics, on thegroundof its individ- 
ualism, completely disappears. The norms of social utility 
become the ideals of personal duty, which are unconditionally 
imperative to the individual. 1 

We may either stop here with so much justification for the 
utilitarianism of Mill and Stephen and the positivism of 
Comte; or go on to the ethical idealism of Kant, whose 

'As we will see below, p. 70, the logical 'necessity' of truth 
like the moral 'necessity' of duty, is socially established. 



66 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

maxim, ' Act so that the rule of thy conduct may be fit for 
universal law,' only reverses the process as sketched in the 
passage above. 1 The Kantian says in effect : " Society absorbs 
and utilizes the individual's ideals of absolute duty"; the Dar- 
winian says: "Society produces the individual, and informs 
him in what thus becomes for him his absolute duty." In 
either case, the duty of the individual is absolute in the 
sense that, having a sense of duty, he must follow its guidance. 
From the point of view of science, however, new possibili- 
ties of fruitful investigation appear. It is evident that the 
genetic or developmental method may be applied fruitfully to 
the moral, whether it be considered as evolving in the social 
life of the race, or as developing in the moral sense of the 
individual. Objective or social ethics becomes a department 
of anthropology. It is the science of the actual rise and 
evolution of morals in races and peoples, and ranks with 
other comparative sciences of human institutions. The devel- 
opment of the moral nature of the individual is also opened 
to scientific investigation in connection with that of his social 
nature. In both these directions the natural history of 
morals — and also that of religion — is being made out. 2 They 
both proceed, however, it is clear, upon the assumption that 
morality as such is natural and social, and has its develop- 
mental stages of progression both in the individual and in the 
race. As a distinctive mental function, its evolution takes 
place in connection with the history and development of 
man. I have therefore elsewhere described it as 'anthropo- 

1 "Act always on such a maxim as thou kanst at the same time 
will to be a universal law", Kant, Metaph. of Morals, Abbott's trans. 

2 Recent books dealing respectively with these two sorts of 
enquiry may be mentioned: Ethics, by Dewey and Tufts, and The 
Moral Life, by A. E. Davies (Review Publishing Co., Baltimore, 
1909). Westermarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas 
also falls within the first-named branch of enquiry. 



DARWINISM AND ETHICS 67 

genetic' in the one case, and in the other case, as shown in 
the parallel development of the individual's moral sense, as 
'psycho-genetic,' both of these terms being opposed to 
what may, as merely vital or biological, be described as 
'bio-genetic.' 1 

1 Cf . Social and Ethical Interpretations, 4 ed., 'Introduction'; 
and Chapter vi, below, on 'Darwinism and Religion'. See also the 
work of Davies, cited in the last note. 



CHAPTER IV 

DARWINISM AND LOGIC 
I. 

Under the headings of 'instrumental' and 'genetic' logic 1 
the evolution theory has worked its way into the discussion of 
the higher processes of thought. The theory that thought is 
an instrument for dealing with social and practical situations 
— for solving problems of adjustment and truth — has given 
to discussions of knowledge and reality a new and vital 
interest. All knowledge remains experimental until it is 
confirmed, and it can be confirmed only by a resort to trial in 
the domain of its appropriate application. This leads up to 
two very important positions in the newer logic : a view as to 
the nature of truth on the one hand, and a view on the other 
hand as to the nature of the 'laws of thought,' the so-called 
'categories' in which the mind builds up and systematizes 
its acquisitions. 

The theory of truth becomes either one of extreme ' Prag- 
matism' or one merely of 'Instrumentalism.' 

Instrumentalism holds that all truth is tentatively arrived at 
and experimentally verified. The method of knowledge is the 

1 See Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, and Baldwin, Thought 
and Things or Genetic Logic, two works generally cited as exemplify- 
ing the Darwinian influence (cf. Creighton on ' Darwin and Logic' in 
the Psychological Review, Darwin number, May, 1909, in which this 
and the following chapter of this essay have also appeared in incom- 
plete form.) R. Adamson, in his work on The Development of 
Modern Philosophy, also discusses knowledge from the point of 
view of genesis. See also Appendix B. 
68 



DARWINISM AND LOGIC 00, 

now familiar Darwinian procedure of 'trial and error.' The 
thinker, whether working in the laboratory with things or 
among the products of his own imaginative thought, tries out 
hypotheses; and only by trying out hypotheses does he estab- 
lish truth. The knowledge already possessed is used instru- 
mentally' in the form of a hypothesis or conjecture, for the 
discovery of further facts or truths. This reinstates in the 
sphere of thinking the method of Darwinian selection. 

Here Darwinism gives support to the empiricism of Hume 
and Mill and forwards the sober British philosophical tradi- 
tion. And no one illustrates better than Darwin, in his own 
scientific method, the soberness, caution, and soundness of 
this procedure. 1 

Scientific method becomes, when the full implications of 
the matter are thought out, the exhaustive epistemological 
method; that is, we must hold that there is no method of 
reaching results to be called truths which is not found, when 
genetically considered, to go back to the fundamental pro- 
cesses of experimentation. There is no royal road to truth; 
no golden rule of revelation or inspiration by which the phil- 
osopher can deduce the 'universe and the contents thereof.' 
The ambitious Naturphilosophie of the last century remained 
barren and speculative until, through the development of 
experimental and evolutionary science, it became Naturwis- 
senschaft. 

But what shall we say of the principles of knowledge itself ? 
Are there no final a priori and absolute tests of truth such as 
we are accustomed to find in 'identity,' 'consistency,' and 
'sufficient reason'? Are there no constructive categories 
which do not themselves owe their establishment to experi- 
ment? 

As for the categories — here again instrumentalism has its 

1 See Appendix A. 



70 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

adequate reply; and its reply is strictly Darwinian. These, 
too, it claims, the categories, are principles which have been 
selected from numberless possible variations of thought in the 
course of racial evolution. They represent selections, adjust- 
ments to the natural situations which have confronted the 
mind. They are rules of systematization found useful for 
thought and experience, for individual knowledge and prac- 
tice, and for common social belief in the vast stretches of his- 
tory. The mind has built up a structure, as the body has; 
and by a similar method: that of tentative and experimental 
functional adjustment, followed up by the coincident varia- 
tions of mental structure fixed by selection. 

It is here that Herbert Spencer's most valuable intuition 
appears — a conception to be placed beside that of Darwin. 
The weak point in Spencer's harness, however, was his resort 
to Lamarckian inheritance for the fixing of the rib-structures 
of mind. But for the theory of knowledge, the result is the 
same. The most absolute and universal-seeming principles 
of knowledge, viewed racially, are 'practical postulates' 
which have been woven into human thought as presupposi- 
tions of consistent and trustworthy experience. They were 
' original ideas' at some time, found to be useful for the organi- 
zation of knowledge and for the conduct of life; and, now, by 
processes of reflective abstraction, they are set up as schemes 
or forms divorced from the concrete contents which alone gave 
them their justification and value, and called 'the categories.' 

All knowledge, all thought, must conform to the law of 
consistency because this has become the fixed rule of safe 
and profitable experience. 

So far we may recognize the two great conquests of the 
instrumental or experimental logic. It holds that all truth is 
confirmed hypothesis, and that 'reason'' is truth woven into 
mental structure. These two great formulations are handed 



DARWINISM AND LOGIC 7 1 

over to philosophy. Both are Darwinian. The first cites 
the selection of ideas for their utility in personal and social 
development; the second cites the 'coincident' racial selection 
that fixes them in the constitution of the mind. 1 

But a more radical point of view is possible. What is now 
known as Pragmatism proceeds out from this point. It is 
pertinent to notice it here, for it offers a link of transition to 
the philosophical views with which we must briefly concern 
ourselves. 

Pragmatism 2 turns instrumentalism into a system of 
metaphysics. It claims that apart from its tentative instru- 
mental value, its value as guide to life, its value as measured 
by utility, seen in the consequences of its following out, truth 
has no further meaning. Not only is all truth selected for 
its utility, but apart from its utility it is not truth. There is 
no reality then to which truth is still true, whether humanly 
discovered or not; on the contrary, reality is only the content 
of the system of beliefs found useful as a guide to life. 

I wish to point out that, in such a conclusion, not only is the 
experimental conception left behind, but the advantages of the 
Darwinian principle of adjustment to actual situations, physi- 

1 In the work Thought and Things, vol. ii, chaps, iii and xi, the writer 
has published detailed discussions of the psychological processes by 
which practical and social postulates become, in the organization 
of the individual's thought, universal and rational principles. In 
vol. iii of the same work, this position is developed into a genetic 
theory of 'Intuition,' both rational and practical. On the biological 
side, so far as such principles have become hereditary and innate, 
the two possible explanations are those of 'race experience' 
(Lamarckian) and 'organic selection' (Darwinian). 

2 The authoritative expositions are James' Pragmatism and 
Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory. I do not hold these authors, 
however, to the statements made in my text in exposition of this 
chameleon-like theory. A detailed criticism is to be found in the 
article 'The Limits of Pragmatism,' in the Psychological Review, vol. 
xi, 1904, pp. 30 ff. 



72 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

cal and social, is lost; and if so interpreted, instrumentalism 
defeats itself. This clearly appears when we analyze a situa- 
tion involving trial and error. Trial implies a problematical 
and alternative result: either the success of the assumption 
put to trial or its failure. When we ask why this is so, we 
hit upon the presence of some ' controlling' condition or cir- 
cumstance in the situation — some stable physical or social fact 
— whose character renders the hypothesis or suggested solution 
either adequate or vain, as the case may be. The instru- 
mental idea or thought, then, has its merit in enabling us to 
find out or locate facts and conditions which are to be 
allowed for thereafter. These constitute a control upon knowl- 
edge and action, a system of 'things'. Now we may, indeed, 
say that nothing of what we think can be considered real 
except what has been experimentally discovered; but we 
cannot go on to say that it is the discovery that makes it real. 
For if that were true, what account could we give of this 
painstaking and often most laborious process of gradual 
correction and proof ? — what account, that is, of the ' control' 
exercised upon knowledge and action by facts or things? 

I know there are ways of replying to this criticism — ways 
of reducing the environment and its controlling facts to the 
level of postulates of earlier personal or racial experience. 
But while not finding these replies sufficient, 1 ! may simply say 
— confining the discussion to the Darwinian text — that the 
method of selection by trial and error requires that relative 
stability, fixity and permanence be discovered in the 'control' 
conditions in the environment, since the genesis of truth 

1 For the reason that, when knowledge is reduced to the simplest 
terms, there is, for experience itself an unreduced something, which 
it takes to be in some sense 'foreign' to itself. To overlook this 
something, is simply and arbitrarily to abolish the dualistic pre- 
sumption of knowledge, and so to make impossible any account of 
its genesis and development. 



DARWINISM AND LOGIC 73 

lies in the checking off of hypotheses under this more 
stable control. The truth of a thought may be discovered 
through its successful working; but we have to consider 
also the failures, the errors, and indeed the whole situation 
in which truth and error are alike possible. 

Such analysis supports instrumentalism, but it does 
not support pragmatism. I may 'bring about' reality 
perhaps, without this external control, by ' willing to believe' 
in something for which I have no proof or reason, in cases in 
which the sort of event willed — as, for example, some one else's 
conduct — may be conditioned upon my act of will. But 
nature does not take to suggestions so kindly. The will of a 
general may stimulate his troops and so bring to him the 
victory he believes in; but such an act of the general's will 
cannot replenish the short supply of powder or shells, on 
which the issue of the battle perhaps more fundamentally 
depends. 

In one other respect the newer view is transforming the 
theory of knowledge, a respect in which it shares with political 
and social science the impulse of Darwinism. I refer to the 
point of view from which the unit of knowledge, as of practice, 
is no longer to be found in an isolated and self -regulating 
individual. Covering both the logical and the political 
aspects of the topic by the single term ' Community,' I may 
discuss it under that heading. In social and political science 
it is community of interests; in logic it is community of 
judgments or beliefs. 

Community. 1 Work in social psychology has greatly 

1 The two sorts of ' community' indicated in what follows are 
worked out by the present writer in detail elsewhere; that of the 
social life in Social and Ethical Interpretations (4th ed., 1906), and 
that of knowledge in Thought and Things, vol. ii. 



74 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

modified the notion of the individual. The individual is 
found to be a social product, a complex result, having its genetic 
conditions in actual social life. Individuals act together, not 
alone — collectively, not singly. In short, the selective 
processes which have molded the individual, both racially and 
in his personal development, have turned on collective utilities. 

When interpreted in the political sciences this discovery 
shatters, at one blow, the historical theories of individualism, 
which make such motives as personal contract, individual 
competition, etc., the fundamental springs of human conduct, 
in its social relations, and the sources of government. Instead 
of a social contract, there is a social growth; the only contract 
is the one-sided one that assigns the too individualistic 
thinker or actor to the jail or the asylum. Instead of govern- 
ment 'only with the consent of the governed,' we find 
government by the few or by the many with or without the 
consent of the rest. In this, and in the more 'socialized' 
view of human competition and rivalry, and in the new view of 
social transmission considered as a process which largely 
replaces physical heredity, both in its content and in its 
method, we find summed up the enormous debt that political 
science, together with the other social sciences, owes to 
researches carried out in the spirit of the selection theory. 
Community of interests is a fundamental fact resting on the 
conditions of the rise of community life. 

In the theory of knowledge the same general truth appears, 
and it is for this reason that I place the two cases together. 
In the social sciences and in the theory of knowledge alike 
' community' or some equivalent term, used to denote that 
character which is the opposite of individualism and 
atomism, is henceforth to be one of the watchwords. In 
the theory of knowledge it appears in the social reference that 
all knowledge implies. 



DARWINISM AND LOGIC 75 

For psychologists and logicians the problem now is to find 
any knowledge that is psychologically private, not to find 
knowledge that is common and public. Individual judgment 
and sentiment are everywhere rooted in social life — through 
education, tradition, convention — and it becomes a problem 
of knowledge, as of ethics, to show how it is possible for 
anyone to 'be a Daniel,' 'to stand alone.' The result is that 
the subjectivistic theories of knowledge, like the individual- 
istic theories of political science, are soon to be laid away in 
the attics where old intellectual furniture is stored. The 
knower does not start out in isolation and then come to some 
sort of agreement with others by ' matching ' his world of 
independent sensations and cognitions with theirs. On the 
contrary, he starts with what his and his neighbor's experiences 
in common verify; and only partially and by degrees does he 
find himself and prove himself to be a relatively competent 
independent thinker. The theory of the 'communities' or 
common validities of knowledge, and of the corresponding 
'communities or common interests of members of society, is a 
new possession, due largely to the genetic researches which 
the Darwinian spirit and method have inspired. 

"The individual", I have said in effect elsewhere 1 "is the 
result of refined processes of social differentiation. If he 

1 Thought and Things, vol. ii, chap, iii, sect. 75. 

I may be allowed to quote also the following passage, sum- 
marizing the results of longer discussions, from the article ' Knowl- 
edge and Imagination,' the Psychological Review, May, 1908 
(somewhat altered) : ' ' Knowledge is essentially and fundamentally 
common or social, not private. The sentence ' the individual is a 
social outcome, not a social unit' hits off this result. The same aspect 
of logical community might be hit off in the sentence ' knowledge 
is common property, not a private possession.' As the former of 
these sentences states the truth that is, in my opinion, finally to 
refute individualism in social theory, so the latter supplies the anal- 
ogous refutation of individualism in the world of truth. The ques- 



76 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

makes himself a social unit over against society, he becomes 
eccentric and anti-social, and his damnation is sure. So of 
knowledge. It begins common, stays common, claims to be 
common, enforces its commonness. No knowledge confined 
to one private head, repeated in other private heads an in- 
finity of times, would ever become an organic system of 
common knowledge. It must already, in its constitution 
reflect its social origin and fitness. The single item of 
knowledge, the private self-contained thought of a single 
thinker, is the result of refined processes of cognitive differ- 
entiation. The private thought is not a cognitive unit; it is 
a cognitive outcome. The thought that claims the isolation 
and absolute lack of common control of an individual unit, 
is read off as eccentric and unreal, and its damnation is no 
less sure". 

Valuation. From this point of view it is an easy transi- 
tion from ethics and logic to the general theory of Value; and 
as we should expect, we find the step taken in a series of works 
devoted to the nature and processes of valuation. 1 If we find 



tion 'how do we get together as citizens in a practical world?' is now 
condemned as unreal and obsolete. We are together and only in 
social life do we become relatively separate — relatively private 
and independent selves. So the question 'how can we know things 
together?' is soon to be similarly outlawed. We do not have to 
come together to know; on the contrary, we become only relatively 
competent and independent in knowing things separately. The 
kingdom of life does not have to naturalize or matriculate its citi- 
zens; on the contrary it is the citizen of no-man's-land who has lost 
his birth-right. So the kingdom of truth has no matriculation 
examinations; its process is, on the contrary, the separation from 
its body of the individual who insists on privacy and eccentricity. 
The normal citizen in this kingdom is the person whose conforming 
private judgment is at once the sign of his social fitness." 

1 See especially W. M. Urban, Valuation, its Nature and Laws, 
1909, in which other citations are to be found. Cf. also the ref- 
erences given in Diet, of Philos., sub verbo. 



DARWINISM AND LOGIC 77 

it possible to construe the morally good and also the logically- 
true as in some sense useful, then it becomes a final problem 
to determine what relation such utility has to the 'valuable' 
as such. And a moment's reflection convinces us that by- 
leading to a utilitarian interpretation of morals and truth the 
Darwinian conception of survival has, in these cases at least, 
thrown light upon value. The valuable is that which has 
survived on account of its utility. Truth, no less than good- 
ness or money or art, has its value. 

When we generalize this, we make out an instrumental and 
utilitarian theory of value in general; that is, of value as 
attaching to things. A thing is judged valuable when a 
fitness of some sort — social, moral, economic, aesthetic — is 
predicated of it. This serves as basis for a detailed scientific 
investigation of the conditions and modes of valuation as 
springing from varied experiences of utility. Such utilities, 
established in social and individual experience, come by 
appropriate genetic processes to be reflected in the rules or 
'norms' of the 'practical reason'. 1 

It is evident, however, that in its criterion, value is in some 
sense immediate; that is, value is such for the subject or group 
in whose experience the utility springs up and develops. The 
final test of values of all kinds — understood as attributions of 
fitness — is found in the peculiar satisfaction given by the 
experiences into which these values enter. This is directly 
opposed to the ' formal ' theory which holds that standards 
of value, as of truth, are apprehended intuitively apart from 
experiences of utility or satisfaction. 

It is possible, with value in general — as with moral value, 
as indicated in an earlier passage above — to go on to the 
recognition of a point of view from which all empirical values, 
as now defined, are harmonized in a perfectly satisfying 

1 See the first note on p. 71 above. 



78 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

and, for experience, 'absolute' worth. In this sense the 
present writer finds aesthetic experience of absolute worth: 
it is an experience of complete and immediate harmony of 
values with values, and of values with truths. But this 
should not be understood as recognizing absolute worth 
as something established apart from the experiences of life. 



CHAPTER V 

DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 1 

In coming to a conclusion as to the influence of Darwin's 
thought on philosophy, we should first sum up the general 
results of Darwinian views in the different branches of 
knowledge with which philosophy deals. If we look upon 
philosophy, as many do, as simply the broadest and most 
unified view that we can get of the world as a whole, it is 
evident that our task will be to set together the results of the 
more partial disciplines; the results reached, that is, by the 
sciences of fact and value. This leads to the body of theory 
embraced by philosophy. Accepting this as a general state- 
ment of the problem of the content or matter of philosophy, a 
preliminary question arises — that of philosophical method. 
By what method should philosophy proceed? 

Philosophical Method. In an earlier address, in which the 
history of psychology was briefly outlined, 2 I took occasion 
to point out that an epoch in the progress of that science was 
inaugurated with the absorption of Darwin's point of view; 
and this because it produced a revolution in psychological 
method. The following quotation from that paper (slightly 
revised) may serve to introduce the topic: 

"The rise of the evolution theory in biology supplied the 
direct motive to a genetic psychology. Lamarck himself 

1 For an able discussion of this topic, see HSff dings paper in 
the Cambridge volume, Darwin and Modern Science. 

2 Proceedings of the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science, 
printed also in the Psychological Review, vol. xii, 1905, pp. 144 ff. 

79 



So DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

recognized the psychological factor in one of his general prin- 
ciples — that in which he pointed out the function of mind, by 
effort, struggle, etc., in modifying the organism to accommo- 
date it to the environment. The explicit application, how- 
ever, of the Lamarckian theory to the mind was due to Her- 
bert Spencer in whose work we recognize a conscious attempt 
to work out an evolution theory of mind, as a branch of general 
cosmology. But it was in the same generation, indeed in the 
same decade, that those other Englishmen, Darwin and 
Wallace, gave to biology and psychology alike an impulse 
which has established a genetic science. For Lamarckism is 
not sufficiently 'positive'; it lends itself to the obscurities of 
'vitalism.' Only in Darwinism did a thorough-going positivism 
of method supplement and correct the partial naturalism of 
Spencer and Lamarck. The contribution consisted in extend- 
ing to the mind the methods of positive and comparative re- 
search, and the formulation of a principle, that of natural selec- 
tion, which established genetic continuity and on the basis of 
which research could be directed and controlled. It is 
somewhat remarkable that Lamarckism never secured the 
hold upon the mind of psychologists that it did upon those 
of biologists; and the progress toward Darwinian positivism 
has had much reinforcement from workers in our science. 

"Now — at the beginning of the twentieth century — the 
genetic principle is coming into its rights. It has done most 
service hitherto negatively, through antagonism to a psychology 
exclusively associational, on the one hand, and to one exclu- 
sively structural, on the other hand. Associationism was debtor 
for its 'structural' concept to physics; it was a positivism of 
the atomistic or a-genetic type. Later psychology is debtor, 
for its 'functional' concept to biology; it is a positivism of 
the developmental or genetic type. However fruitful the 
atomistic, structural psychology has been, it has had its word, 



DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 8 1 

and it is not the final word. A great era is upon us of research 
by the treatment of consciousness as a thing of functional 
evolution in the race, and of personal development in the 
individual. The general psychology of the future has been 
prepared for in the physical mode of psychologizing, just as 
the general biology of the present was prepared for by the 
anatomical science of life which preceded it." 

Psychology has always been the vestibule, as it were, to 
philosophy, and advance in the latter never gets far beyond 
that of the former. So when psychology adopted seriously 
a naturalistic and positivistic method — the method, that is, 
of the positive sciences of nature — philosophy had also to 
recognize the generality of these points of view. Philo- ^/ 
sophical truth, like all other truth, must be looked upon as 
truth about nature — the nature of the world and the nature of 
man — and its progress is secured through reflection exercised 
under the control of the positive instruments and methods 
employed in those subjects. Purely deductive, speculative 
and personal systems of philosophy may be useful as gym- 
nastics and profitable as sources of individual fame; but the 
genuine progress of philosophy is to be looked for only through 
those methods of confirmation and proof which control the 
imagination and permanently satisfy the logical and other 
demands of common reflection. There may be different 
philosophies, but, like rival scientific hypotheses, each must 
show the array of facts, aims, motives, values, etc., that it 
can explain better than any other. Philosophy is not an exer- 
cise of preference, but an exercise of reason! 

In these directions Darwin has strongly influenced modern 
philosophical thought; so strongly that the historical issues of 
philosophy have taken on new forms, which, in the new names 
now in vogue to describe them, are unfamiliar to the old- 
school philosophers. Instead of the problem of 'design,' we 



82 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

now have discussions of 'teleology'; instead of the doctrine 
of 'chance,' we now have the 'theory of probabilities'; instead 
of 'fatalism' and 'freedom,' we now have 'determinism' and 
' indeterminism,' variously qualified; instead of 'God,' we 
hear of 'absolute experience;' instead of 'Providence,' of 
'order' and ' law' ; instead of 'mind and body,' of 'dualism or 
monism.' Not that all this shifting of emphasis and change 
of terms are due to Darwin; but that they are incidents of the 
newer antitheses current since the mind has been considered 
as subject to 'natural law,' and the world, including God and 
man, as common material for science to investigate. Scien- 
tific naturalism and positivism are methods of unlimited 
scope; and the question of philosophy is, what does the whole 
system of things, of external facts and of human values alike 
— when thus investigated — really turn out to mean? 1 

Design. I may illustrate this by considering more fully a cen- 
tral problem — one common to biology and psychology alike,and 
one whose answer colors the whole of one's philosophy. It is 
the old problem of 'design,' giving rise in biology to theories 
of 'special creation' and 'chance,' and now discussed, alike in 
biology and psychology, in the form of questions of 'vitalism' 
and ' teleology.' In what sense, if any, is the world — and in it, 
life and mind — an ordered, progressive and intelligible whole ? 
And if it is such in any sense, how did it become so ? Is it due 
to intelligence ? — and if so, whose intelligence ? The most 
violent controversies aroused by the publication of the Origin 
of Species were let loose about this question. To Darwin's 
opponents 'chance,' 'fortuitous or spontaneous variation,' 
was to take the place of intelligent creation, Providence, God. 
If there be no rule of selection and survival save that of utility, 
and no source of the useful save the overproduction of chance 

1 The terms naturalism and positivism are here used as descrip- 
tive of methods only, not of philosophical systems. 



DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 83 

cases, where is the Guiding Hand ? Does not Natural Selec- 
tion dispense with a ruling Intelligence altogether ? 

We have only to understand the present-day statement of this 
problem to see the enormous concession to naturalism which 
the theory of Darwin has forced. Instead of ' chance' in the 
sense of uncaused 1 accident, we now have the notion of ' prob- 
ability,' a mathematically exact interpretation of what is only 
to superficial observation fortuitous and capricious; instead 
of an interfering Providence, we have universal order born of 
natural law. And it is within such conceptions as these, now 
taken as common ground of argument, that the discussion of 
teleology is conducted. The world is no longer thought of as 
a piece of mosaic work put together by a skilful artificer — as 
the old design theory looked upon it — but as a whole, a cos- 
mos, of law-abiding and progressive change. A philosopher 
who knows his calling today seeks to interpret natural law, 
not to discover violations of it. The violations, if they came, 
would reduce the world to caprice, chance and chaos, instead 
of providing a relief from these things. 

So Darwin's view, while administering a coup de grace 
to theories of chance and special creation, both equally desul- 
tory, capricious and lawless, replaced them once for all with 
law. It indicated the method of operation by which the pro- 

1 Darwin himself described ' spontaneous variation' in these 
words (Descent of Man, ed. cit., p. 49): "provisionally called spon- 
taneous, for, to our ignorance, they appear to arise without any 
exciting cause." Darwin, however, was far from holding that they 
were uncaused or actually fortuitous, The claim is sometimes put 
forth by those who hold to 'determinate' variations and 'self- 
directed' evolution (Orthogenesis) that their view replaces chance 
with law. See Osborn in the memorial volume Fifty Years of Dar- 
winism, p. 225, 241. But unless some cause can be shown for the 
supposed determinate variations, the assumption of these only 
replaces the law of natural selection, and the laws by which varia- 
tions are actually produced, by new forms of vitalism and mysticism. 



84 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

gressive forms of nature are evolved in stages more and more 
ordered and fit. The operation of such a law is no less and 
no more ' rational,' no less and no more ' fatalistic,' no less and 
no more ' atheistic,' than is that of any other law, physical or 
mental. What law — meaning simply what regular method of 
change— is operative in nature ? and what is its range, as com- 
pared with other such laws ? — these are questions entirely of 
fact, to be determined by scientific investigation. And how far 
the method or law called by Darwin ' natural selection' goes, 
what its range really is, we are now beginning to see in its 
varied applications in the sciences of life and mind. It seems 
to be — unless future investigations set positive limits to its 
application — a universal principle; for the intelligence itself, 
in its procedure of tentative experimentation, or 'trial and 
error/ appears to operate in accordance with it. 

Indeed, it is in connection with this question that we are 
beginning to see how intelligence may, and does, work within 
the limits of law, effectively doing its work without violating 
the universal natural order. The statistical treatment of 
cases by newer methods 1 shows that events due to intelligence, 
on the one hand, and those observed to fulfil law, on the other 
hand, fit into the same curves of distribution, if a sufficiently 
large number of cases of each be taken for treatment. Events 
involving social and voluntary factors—phenomena of crime, 2 
the size of families, 3 etc., each for itself depending upon 
the intelligent and free choice of individuals — when taken in 
the mass, follow the same laws of number and variation as do 
purely physical events in which there is no element of con- 
scious determination. In a given community the annual 
number of suicides is as constant as the number of deaths 

1 See especially K. Pearson, The Chalices of Death, vol. i. 

2 Cf. the works of Morselli and Durkheim, on ' Suicide.' 

3 See Pearson, loc. cit. 



DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 85 

by accident. If this is so, we need not suppose any essen- 
tial difference in the results in the long run; and we may take 
our choice as between a purely mechanical interpretation of 
all the cases, or an interpretation of them all as involving a 
deeper and more immanent principle which works by either 
method or by both. In other words, it is not a teleology of 
the human type, operating individually and tentatively against 
nature, that our philosophy must recognize; but mind in the 
larger sense of a principle whose mode of operation is in and 
through the reign of natural law. This gives to natural selec- 
tion the dignity assigned to gravitation or any other cosmic 
principle, provided such universal range be finally assigned 
to it. 1 

One other instance may be cited to show how the evolution 
theory is serving to bring about a revision of the older philo- 
sophical conceptions. The notion of 'cause,' as held by the 
earlier, more dualistic philosophies, has been transformed with 
the advent of a broader naturalism. 

Cause. — Among the objections to Darwinism, in the early 
days, was one that held that natural selection left no place for 
'freedom' or intelligent initiation, but reduced all the se- 
quences of nature to the level of 'cause and effect,' interpreted 
as a mechanical principle of the transfer of physical energy. 
It appeared that all movement, the entire dynamic and genetic 
aspect of nature, was reduced to a series of compositions and 
re-compositions, of transformations and re-transformations, of 
a certain physical or energetic stuff. ' Matter in motion' was 
the formula of 'cause and effect.' 

In the recent developments of the theory of science, how- 
ever, we begin to see how to make articulate our protest 
against this most superficial generalization. 'Cause' is a 

1 Further discussion of teleology is to be found in Appendix B. 



86 DARWIN AND. THE HUMANITIES 

broader conception than 'energy.' Only when quantita- 
tively considered are natural sequences exhausted by me- 
chanical changes, and qualitative differences are as universal 
and natural as are quantitative identities. There must be a 
revision of the notion of causation, to allow for the qualitative 
growth processes of life and mind, for the new modes of 
qualitative appearance that the genetic or developmental 
series of changes show. All vital, mental and social series of 
changes are of this sort: they are really dynamic, genetic. A 
psychological effect is not ' equivalent' to its antecedent con- 
ditions, considered as its cause, nor in any way identical with 
them in a quantitative sense. In what sense can we say, for 
example, that a choice is 'equivalent' or 'equal' in 
energy to the antecedent motives of the agent? In what 
intelligible sense can an organic adaptation, upon whose 
utility the subsequent cause of evolution possibly depends, 
be said to be a mere transformation of energy, equivalent to 
the mechanical forces that condition it? Granted that so 
far as it is quantitave, it does follow the physical law, we 
still claim that the qualitative aspects are also there and must 
have their own interpretation. In many cases of natural 
sequences we have to deal with this added aspect of change — 
with genetic change, with growth and organization. We ob- 
serve qualitative not merely quantitative phenomena, modes 
of appearance and organization, not mere units of energy; 
and we must recognize the making of new modes of quality 
in every genetic movement of nature. Nature achieves novel- 
ties; there may be, qualitatively speaking, more or less in 
the effect than there is in the cause. 

This position is forced upon us by the radical acceptance of 
evolution. Spencer tried to subject the whole evolution 
movement to the mechanical conception of causation; and he 
failed most signally. He interpreted all development in 



DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 87 

terms of successive transformations of energy. Thus life and 
mind alike were eviscerated of all their richer meaning. 
So soon, however, as we give genetic change a significance as 
fundamental as mechanical change, we reach a very different 
result. Every genetic change ushers in a real advance, a 
progression on the part of nature to a higher mode of reality. 
Actually new things — novelties — are daily achieved in life, 
mind and society; results which we can not interpret in terms 
of the mere composition of the elements involved. We 
cannot predict, for example, the opinions of a group by add- 
ing together the convictions of the individuals of the group. 
Similarly, the outcome of organic growth and of psychologi- 
cal synthesis alike could not be predicted from the most 
exact knowledge of simple organic or psychic 'elements', if 
we did not already know in this case or that what to 
expect. The entire circle of ideas of 'energetics' is foreign 
and artificial to these genetic modes of organization. 

Mechanical causation, physical energetics — these are, in 
very fact, the poorest and least interesting aspects of nature. 
They are instrumental conceptions, fruitful in science; but 
along with the processes which these concepts generalize, go 
the dynamic, genetic, evolutionary modes of condition and 
consequent, which are equally actual and, in a comprehensive 
philosophy, infinitely more significant. 1 

The objection, then, that Darwinism reduces life and 
mind to physics, is quite beside the mark. On the contrary, 
the very radicalness of Darwin's conception, in forbidding any 
compromise with vitalism, accidentalism and all forms of 
obscurantism, has compelled the recognition of progressive 



1 This point of view is developed by the writer under the head- 
ing 'Theory of Genetic Modes' in Development and Evolution, 
chap, xix; it is forcefully presented also by Professor H. Bergson in 
his work, Evolution creatrice. 



85 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

movement, of real evolution, as of the profoundest essence 
of nature. The reign of physical science and of mechanical 
law over the scientific and philosophic mind is over now, at 
the opening of the twentieth century. We have been hypno- 
tized by the term ' energy' long enough. 

These illustrations may suffice to show with what stones 
modern thinkers are laying the foundations of a new philoso- 
phy. I may not now develop the matter further, since my topic 
has its limits in the influence of Darwin. But it is easy to see 
that with the conception of an immanent principle of change, 
issuing in modes of reality which are progressively more 
and more significant for the demands of intelligence and 
life — the way is open for an interpretation of the world in 
terms of an organization of which progressive self-integrating 
experience is the type. 1 

It is sufficient in this place to have shown, that in the work- 
ing out of such an interpretation, the naturalism of Darwin 
has been and will be an important factor. 

If, in conclusion, a brief statement were called for of the 
sort of influence Darwin has exercised on philosophical 
thought, I should sum it up in somewhat the following terms : 
Darwin gave the death-blow to uncritical vitalism in biology, 
to occultism in psychology, and to mysticism and formalism 
in philosophy. Each of these, alike progeny of the obscurant- 
ism of dogmatic thought, has in turn yielded before the con- 
ception of natural law and order embodied by Darwin in the 
theory of natural selection. This in turn requires the radi- 
cal acceptance of a genetic or dynamic view of the world. 

1 It should be remembered that Hegel attempted systematically 
to incorporate the idea of development in a system which is rad- 
ically idealistic in character. 



DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 



The theory of natural selection is to be accepted not merely 
as a law of biology as such, but as a principle of the natural 
world, which finds appropriate application in all the sciences 
of life and mind. 



CHAPTER VI 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 1 



The growth of a positively scientific and naturalistic method 
of enquiry in the mental and moral sciences, and of the his- 
torical point of view in the political and social sciences, 
could not fail to show itself, also, in the study of the phenomena 
of religion. The topic, it is evident, is open to approach 
from the side both of historical and of psychological science. 
We find, accordingly that the analytic and formal methods 
of studying religion, which have been so long in vogue, have 
in recent years yielded to what is known as the 'genetic' 
method. This latter concerns itself with the study of religion in 
its development in the individual and its evolution in the race. 

This study, as now-a-days prosecuted, takes on, as I have 
just intimated, two great forms, in both of which we find the 
further carrying out of the influences already characterized 
as Darwinian. 

I. Anthropo- genetic study: — the study of the modes or 
forms of religion viewed historically, racially, comparatively. 
It comprises the historical investigation of religion in all 
its forms, considered as a social institution, and as a factor 
in the evolution of human culture. It is an important chap- 
ter in Anthropology. 

II. Psycho-genetic study: — the study of the modes, stages, 
objects of personal religious experience as such. Its prob- 

1 Revised text of a paper presented to the Fourth Inter. Cong, 
of the Hist, of Religion, Oxford, August, 1908, under the title 'The 
Genetic Study of Religion'. 

90 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 9 1 

lem is that of the development of personal religion in the 
individual : a problem of Psychology. 

The former of these branches of the genetic study of religion 
may be called the Comparative Science of religion, the latter 
its Genetic Psychology. And to one who entertains both 
these points of view, finding interesting conclusions estab- 
lished in both fields, the further important question arises as 
to the relation of the two sets of results to each other. There 
must be, indeed, a comparison and correlation of the results 
reached respectively by the historical student, on the one 
hand, and the psychological student, on the other hand. 
Anthropology and psychology are thus brought together in 
the genetic investigation of one of the most important of 
our human interests. 

I wish in this brief chapter merely to point out that there 
are certain very interesting points of correlation already 
established and that these are the fruits of the genetic method 
pursued in the spirit of Darwinism. The results of genetic 
study in the one field, that of psychology, has confirmed some 
of the most remarkable generalizations reached in the other, 
that of Anthropology. 



In the first place, however, a word is necessary as to the 
relation of these two great fields of inquiry to each other. 
When they are viewed genetically, it is evident that they 
are not really two fields, two sets of phenomena. The series 
of anthropological facts, when traced in their development 
in human history, from the more primitive to the more 
developed stages of religious culture, must of course be 
interpreted by the actual religious experience of individuals 
at the several stages. Each religious institution, at the time 
it was alive, required men having vital religious experiences 



92 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

of a particular sort. The recognition of this enables us to 
establish a canon of anthropological research, to the effect 
that no result of such research can be finally made out, in the 
interpretation of a given set of facts, unless the psychology 
of the group or tribe in question be such as to support and 
confirm it. 

For example, the contention that an 'idea of God' as a 
being 'ethically perfect', or 'metaphysically infinite', is present 
in the crudest religions, is refuted when we remember the 
simple fact, established by psychology, that the religious 
experience of individuals, in the primitive stages of culture, 
does not contain such an 'idea of God.' The view, too, 
that the object of religious worship is always a 'spirit', requires 
that we make a new definition of ' spirit ' for each of the stages 
of religious experience which we find to be ever more crude 
as we trace the history backward. Could such or such an 
object of worship, conceived in spiritual terms, have been 
present at the particular stage under investigation — that is 
the question it is necessary to ask in each case. And it is 
the psychologist who must give the answer. 

The reverse is also true. Vital religious experiences issue 
in typical modes of religious life, and embody themselves 
in institutions, which the anthropologist is called upon to study. 
The psychologist, tracing out the development of the type 
of experience he calls religious, must constantly recognize 
the checks afforded by anthropology. He cannot, for exam- 
ple, rest content with an individualistic theory of religion — 
the view that religion springs up in the individual in the form 
of rational insight or private intuition — in the face of the 
conclusion drawn from comparative and anthropological 
study, to the effect that religion is, in its origin, always 
social — always an institution of gradual evolution, embodying 
the results of social intercourse, and showing a certain unity 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 93 

of personal motive and practice among the individuals of a 
community. 

These two sciences indeed, share the demand made also 
upon other sciences in which both individual development 
and racial evolution are under investigation. Social life, at 
any stage of racial evolution, cannot be held to embody prin- 
ciples of organization, nor to comprise institutions, for which 
full ground cannot be found in the personal growth and 
capacity of the individuals of that group at that time. On 
the other hand, psychology cannot hold that certain types 
of thought and life were current in any group of peoples 
unless the anthropologist in turn actually finds institutional 
or other evidence of such experiences, as historical fact. 
Personal experience can never release itself from the bond 
to racial culture which gives it its necessary environment and 
support. In the case before us this means that a religion 
is always the embodiment of the actual religious experience 
of individuals of a certain grade of culture, while religious 
experience in turn is always a personal interpretation of 
an existing religion. Not only religious conformity, but also 
religious revolt, involves the assimilation and re-interpretation 
of what is found in actual religious institutions. 

In their nature and order, therefore, the stages discovered 
in the development of the personal religious experience of 
individuals coincide or concur, in a large way, with those 
discovered in the history of religion itself. 

It is not my object, however, to dwell upon these rules of 
scientific procedure, nor to illustrate them in detail. They 
show, however, the rapproachement between these two 
sciences, brought about by the evolution theory. I wish, on 
the contrary, to pass at once to my main point — which is 
that the method is justified by the striking parallelism or con- 
currence of results in these two relatively independent fields. 



94 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

I may now proceed to cite cases of such parallelism or 
concurrence. They are all well established, as I believe, 
by recent studies in psychology and anthropology. 

II 

It is necessary, at the start, to state certain of the results 
of historical study — comparative ' anthropo-genetic results' — 
as a basis for the selection of our psychological data. I 
think the following general statements will be widely accepted 
by anthropologists and students of comparative religion; if 
not just in the form here adopted, still without essential 
modification of meaning. 

i. There is no one form always assumed by the object of 
worship, no single embodiment of deity common to all 
religions. The form of the object of worship is subordinate 
to the meaning given to it in the intention of the devotee. 
The actual object — the content ' presented' or set up before 
the mind, to speak in psychological terms — varies from the 
crudest physical and inanimate objects up to the highest 
abstractions of thought and the noblest creations of art. 

2. What is common, on the other hand, to all objects of 
religious veneration is their symbolism, their meaning as 
bearing the further interpretation given them by their religious 
use. There is no fixed religious ' idea,' but rather a common 
way of treating various ideas in thought, feeling and intention. 
Objects of many sorts fulfil in common a group of personal 
and social demands which we describe as religious. What 
all ' gods ' have in common is their meaning for the worshipper, 
whereby they afford appropriate ends or termini for his 
attitudes and dispositions of worship. 

3. Religion is found to be everywhere essentially a social 
phenomenon, an institution of first-rate public significance 
in its time and place. Religious rites are bound up with — 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 95 

originate in or with — give value to — a great body of conven- 
tions, customs, traditions, laws. The religious sanctions, 
the rewards and punishments prescribed by religion for cer- 
tain types of conduct, are earlier in social evolution than the 
legal and ethical sanctions. In primitive culture, the temple 
is the locus of social authority, and the priest is the executive 
of the social will. Moreover, religious authority remains 
the court of final appeal, which interprets and develops the 
growing body of social tradition, and adds by its decisions to 
the mass of social rights, duties, privileges and beliefs. 

4. The embodiment of the religious meaning, what we 
have called the 'content' of the object of religious worship, 
the deity, is always personal or quasi-personal; that is, it 
always has for the worshipper the significance of an agency 
like himself. However dead the mere thing of worship, the 
image, the fetish, the work of art, may be, it still means a 
center of behavior which may be taken to indicate an attitude 
on the part of the God toward the worshipper. 

These are results established by anthropology for which we 
may seek confirmation in psychology. They stand out as 
features of the historical movement of religious evolution, 
when we look at its longitudinally progress through the ages. 
They apply to all the stages, and become the differentia of 
the movement: so that, by applying these criteria, we can 
define a movement of culture or an institution as religious. 
We may sum them up for our present purposes somewhat in 
this way: religion, historically considered, is, (i) a mass of 
developing meaning or tradition more or less successfully 
embodied in a series of objects, ideas and beliefs. This 
mass of meaning is (2) socially derived, established and 
preserved. For the individual (3) it takes on the form of 
a personal god, correlative with his own personal self, and 
developing in his experience with the growth of his own per- 
sonality. 



96 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

III 

If these things be true — if religion is what the gods mean 
to the worshipper — if this meaning is social and personal, 
fulfilling a demand that arises in the development of the 
individual as a person — if these things be true, then as psy- 
chologists we should find most interesting 'concurrences' 
between these results and our own. To show that this is the 
case we will now consider in turn certain results reached in 
genetic and social psychology; and then go on to show their 
bearing in the present connection. 

The question for psychology, of course, is the broad one, 
what is religious experience? — is it the sort of experience, 
in the individual, that could and does embody itself in the 
social institutions described by anthropology in the foregoing 
terms? Is religious experience, in short, what it would be 
if the anthropologists are right in their definition of religion ? 
Let us enquire broadly then what the psychologist of today 
has to say about personal religious experience. 

A truth common to the genetic and social psychology of 
today, is embodied in the statement that the development of 
self-consciousness in the individual is not a private move- 
ment, circumscribed by the single person's mind. On the 
contrary, this development is social to the core. It involves, 
as we have seen on an earlier page, intercourse with other 
persons. It is through the imitative and other give-and-take 
processes proper to all education that the individual's thought 
of himself in personal terms is built up. The conscious- 
ness of self is not an intuition, a bit of rational insight, shot 
into his mind, as so many seem to think. It is gradually 
formed through social experience with other selves; it is at 
first crude, imperfect, and subject to many illusions. Only 
gradually are the boundaries of the single self marked out 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 97 

and the limits of one's own 'self determined. And this 
content, thus socially derived through intercourse, is read 
again into each person of the social group in the terms in 
which the individual is able to conceive it of himself; only 
to be read again into himself, with the added knowledge 
derived from his attempt to understand others. The result- 
ing self, the self of self-consciousness, is what we have called 
above a 'socius,' a companion, a self-among-selves, a self 
that maintains a life of give-and-take, of intercourse and 
mutual reaction with others in a series of social situations. 
Each such 'socius,' by his very apprehension of himself, 
apprehends also the relationships which give him his social 
status and place. 

If this is the nature of the thought of self, its materials being 
common to many individuals alike, then the dispositions, emo- 
tions, and attitudes characteristic of the self will be the same, 
or similar, toward persons; that is, these dispositions and 
attitudes will be not private and individual, but common and 
social. They will attach to self-in-general — to your, my, 
him-self . My fellow-feeling for one in pain, for example, will 
show itself as naturally for you in the form of sympathy, 
as for myself in the form of grief and self-love. So with all 
the personal emotions and passions. They do not belong to 
an isolated person, who considers his own interest alone; 
but to a ' socius ', a companion, who thinks along with himself 
of all the other selves as well. 

The first result to be noted, therefore, in the consideration 
of the psychology of personality is that the individual's devel- 
opment is dependent upon social relationships, and his atti- 
tudes toward his fellows in these relationships — sympathetic, 
altruistic, social — spring up naturally with his knowledge 
or thought of himself. 

Again, second, we find, in the development of the sense of 



98 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

self that there are two contrasted poles or points of reference 
which stand out in more or less contrast in all the situations 
of life. There is, on the one hand, the individual personal 
self, the 'ego,' in which the material takes on the form of 
'my-self:' and on the other hand, there is the self of the 
other person to whom the ego stands in relation — called the 
'alter,' or 'other-self.' These two seem, on occasion, to be 
in rather strong contrast to each other, and the question 
arises whether the statement of this state of relative opposition 
between the 'ego' and the 'alter' does not contradict the 
statement just made to the effect that the self-thought is one. 

The solution of this apparent contradiction leads us to a 
third psychological position in the statement of which we 
come back to the topic of religion again. There are in every 
mind — the child's, say, when he thinks of himself as being in 
a given situation with others— not only the two contrasted 
selves, facing each other and urging, possibly, their opposing 
interests; but also, in addition, a sense of the presence of a 
possible 'good self,' a higher or ideal personality, whose 
decision would be, in all cases, the proper and correct one. 
This is what is called the 'ideal self.' It is the germ of all 
experience properly called moral or religious; and its impor- 
tance warrants our saying a little more about it. 

In all the progress of the mind, the imagination is the instru- 
ment of learning and discovery. There is a constant project- 
tion of our meanings by the imagination, a reaching forward, 
in the way of assumption and hypothesis — the attempt to 
imagine and forestall what is still to come. In this way 
many of the problems of actual life are solved in advance 
by the imagination. All experimentation, in science and in 
practical life, depends upon this, involving as it does, the 
imaginative building up of hypotheses and their testing to 
find out whether, as matter of fact, they work. 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 99 

In this way the imagination is submitted to the control of 
fact or truth. The external world becomes a 'control' of 
knowledge, regulating the use of imagination ; and the world 
of persons becomes the control of the imagination is the 
sphere of personal interests, desires and achievements. 

This movement of the imagination takes place also in the 
sphere, of the personal self. The imaginative projection of 
personality takes on the form of an ideal self, a person for 
whom the contradictions and struggles of the actual opposi- 
tion of selves do not exist, the person who knows all, who 
is perfect, who furnishes, in the world of ideal truths and 
values, the control of the imagination. Just as there is an 
ideal truth by which the imagination of things and events 
is to be controlled, and also an ideal goodness by which the 
practical strivings and relations of life should be controlled, 
so finally there is the ideal personality, which includes the 
partial and contrasting selves of our actual lives. This ideal, 
the ideal self, is 'God.' 

God is a construction of the imagination, beyond the con- 
crete single cases of self -hood that we know: it is an ideal 
set up and considered as actual. Considered as a factor 
in experience, God is the supposed or imagined Self, which 
is the outcome of the self-movement toward perfection — the 
control-meaning anticipated by all the partial adjustments 
which finite selves effect to one another. As the ethical de- 
mand or postulate is one of a completed social order, and 
its ideal one of harmonious practical relationships in a social 
community; so the religious demand or postulate is that of 
a perfect self, a fully realized or complete person, in whom 
the opposition between private and public interests would 
be completely overcome. 

These two ideals, the social and the religious, it should be 
remarked, are correlative to each other. The perfect social 



IOO DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

order requires the morally perfect individual; and the perfect 
individual could arise only in the midst of a perfect social 
order. They indicate one and the same ideal, when differ- 
ently approached. Both represent the movement of the 
growth of the self — one toward practical adjustment, the 
other toward inner perfection, harmony and tranquility. 

With this brief statement of the bearing on our topic of 
recent psychological theory as to the growth of personality, 
we are prepared to see in what manner it confirms the teach- 
ings of anthropology respecting religion. 

Psychology, in fact, by the establishment of this view of 
the social character of the self and of its development in the 
realm of ideals of morals and religion, confirms at one stroke 
certain most interesting results in anthropology. Let us 
turn now to the points of harmony or concurrences between 
the two sciences. 

First, we have seen that, for psychology, the ideal self is an 
interpretation which arises naturally and normally in experi- 
ence with the growth of the personal consciousness of self. 
It is relatively crude or refined in its meaning, according to 
the stage of development of the self. The ideal develops 
pari passu with the actual self. 

This, it is evident, is in full harmony with the anthropolo- 
gist's finding to the effect that the meaning cherished by 
religion is not identified with the mere object that bears it, 
but is always symbolic; and that this meaning varies with the 
stage of culture and the type of social life of the tribe or 
group. Now it is a crude 'animation' or 'personification;' 
again one of nature's forces or typical operations is made 
vaguely 'spiritual,' as the agent of vengeance or aid: again, 
in the higher reaches of culture, a work of art is made to 
symbolize the religious mystery; and yet again the object 
takes on the form of a rational system of beliefs. All this 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION IOI 

shows a real evolution in religious experience, proceeding 
concurrently in the individual and the race — appearing not 
only in the symbolic meaning, the personal intention, which 
spiritualizes or 'personalizes' the framework of ideas of 
objective symbols, but also in the choice of the things, ideas, 
concepts, symbols which serve as framework. There is a 
progressive refinement, both in the idea, the divine object, 
and in its spiritual meaning. 

Second, the social character of religion, as made out by 
anthropology, finds its explanation in the social nature of 
the self, as discovered by psychology. There is here also a 
striking case of harmony or concurrence between the two 
sciences. 

It appears in this way: the ideal self or deity to the individ- 
ual, is the further carrying out, in the imagination, of the 
self -meaning; and this includes other individuals as well as 
the personal self. It is the ideal of a group, of a set of social 
relations, showing practical and moral oppositions, embar- 
rassments and achievements. It is not the ideal held by 
other tribes and races. The deity shows the growth of the 
normal social relations, and reflects their character, because 
he is the projected personal ideal of the group. While the 
deity must be thought of by these individuals as apart from 
them, since he is personal, yet he is the controlling spiritual 
presence, the voice, the oracle of the group, and may be 
approached through the proper mediation with rites and 
ceremonies. The tribe's deity is in this important sense, then, 
the tribal spirit; he is conceived in terms of the tribal self. 
The ideal that hovers over the personal self of the individual 
and impregnates his spiritual life, is one with the tribal or 
national self-consciousness. 'Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
sians' is not only a formula of personal religious experience; 
it is also a proclamation of civic or national unity: and both 



102 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

are possible in one because, in the process by which the indi- 
vidual idealizes his life in community with others, he also, 
in common with them, erects a communal or national ideal. 
"The perfect self," he might say, "which I should attain, is 
the same as that which you also find you should attain; and 
it is the same that we both imagine as our national spirit, 
patron, or God. Deity may always be taken, therefore, 
to reveal the communal ideal of personality, as that develops 
continuously, while, at the same time, it supplies the appro- 
priate object for the individual's personal worship. 1 

Third. In a third respect also — that in which anthropology 
establishes the personal character of God considered as 
object of religious devotion — a very clear confirmation comes 
from psychology. 

Of course, if religious experience proceeds by an idealiza- 
tion of self, as psychology asserts, nothing but a personal 
self can be its appropriate object. The principle point of 
interest, then, becomes the actual manifestation of this process 
of idealization. This is what anthropology supplies in great 
detail. The psychological need of objectivication is always 
present; it takes on forms indicative of the state of culture of 
the particular community. In very primitive times, before the 
race has clearly learned to distinguish persons as such from 
the more active and capricious manifestations of nature, these 
latter are 'vitalized,' 'personalized,' 'anthropomorphized' 
by the religious consciousness. Moving, capricious, explosive, 
unpredictable things and events are taken for manifestations 
of deity — portents, omens, eclipses, earthquakes, diseases, 
especially nervous and mental manifestations — all unusual 

1 The L Jehovah of the Hebrews is the embodiment both of the 
national aspirations, as voiced in the religion of the prophets, and also 
of the ethical qualities of the Jews; the contrast which Jehovah pre- 
sents to the polytheisic Gods of the Greeks has always attracted com- 
ment. 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 103 

or obscure processes and happenings; and at this stage the 
objects adopted to represent and embody deity are similarly 
crude. But they represent, as the omens of nature do, the 
devotee's ways of representing the ideal self. The amulet, 
the fetish, the idol in some conventionalized form, stands 
for the deity; not indeed merely standing for it, but really 
being it, in the sense of embodying its essential presence and 
meaning to the worshipper. These are not for him dead 
things; they are centers of life — what would be to us cer- 
tainly a crude life, a low order of self-hood, but to him just 
what our refined, artistic and rational symbolism is to us. 

This intent to discover deity, in all stages of culture essen- 
tially the same, shows itself in many devices for approaching 
the indwelling life or spirit. The same devices are effectual 
in actual life — a further indication that the essence of the 
religious meaning is personal. The child approaches his 
father in much the same way as the religious devotee ap- 
proaches the Great Father : he endeavors to please, to placate, 
to appease, to influence in some way, the action and dispo- 
sition of the superior person. In religious history, to make 
this appeal effective, an elaborate system of mediating rites 
and personalities is developed. 

In later development, such attempts to establish a happy 
relation with a remote and not impartial deity are superseded 
by other means of attaining communion and union with God; 
means of bringing the private self into common life with its 
ideal. Expiation, atonement, reconciliation, communion, 
these are all terms for aspects of this one great movement 
of personality. It testifies to the truth of the view that religion 
is a matter of progressive personal idealization. 

The sacrifice of the devotee of Baal, or that of the victim 
of Juggernaut, the suffering of the ascetic, and the resignation 
of the martyr, all spring from the same motive— the need 



104 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

to be at one with the Ideal, the need to be the Ideal Self, whose 
form and whose requirements the growth of individual and 
tribe alike prescribe. Be the form what it may, be the object 
worshipped never so mean, be the religious mode of expres- 
sion never so barbarous, cruel, unaesthetic, all this is unim- 
portant; for through it all the striving of the spirit to realize 
what the object stands for, its groping to be at one with its 
personal and social ideal, this is always there, and this is 
religion. 1 

IV 

In the three respects now pointed out, the concurrence in 
result of researches in anthropology and psychology is strik- 
ing and important. When we come to carry out the details 
a little further, certain additional points of interest appear 
which I may briefly state as corollaries. 

a. It appears from this account, that religion is not an 
artifact in human culture, not a secondary and useless product 
of human evolution — not an ' epiphenomenon ' merely. On 
the contrary, it embodies an essential phase of personal 
growth — an aspect which shows itself alike in the individual's 
development and in the evolution of societies. The personal 
self cannot grow without constantly taking from society its 
essential nourishment; nor can it grow without in turn 'eject- 
ing' again into the social fellows its own experiences of strug- 
gle and achievement. Thus by a two-fold movement, the 
ideal personality is constantly reconstructed; it rests upon 
the basis of growing personal experience and social usage. 

1 One of the biological thinkers of the past generation who in- 
terpreted the Deity as an ideal person — a personal 'eject', to use his 
term — was G. J. Romanes. The psychological view here sketched 
is worked out in detail in the chapters on Religion (chaps, viii 
and x) of the writer's Social and Ethical Interpretations; see also 
the arts, on 'Religion' by several authors in the Diet, of Philosophy. 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION I05 

b. Again, from the anthropological point of view, we see 
that religious institutions, cults, usages of all sorts are a 
necessary part of the manifestations of human life. Every- 
where the religious impulse shows itself in some concrete 
social form; embodies itself, so to speak, in the garments 
of history. The heathen carves out an idol with his hands; it 
is the vehicle of his religious faith. The ethnologist discovers 
it centuries after, unravels its meaning, and preserves it in 
a museum as an object-lesson in the culture of the epoch it 
represents. The philosophical Deist, at the other end of 
the historical scale, works out the reasons for his faith, 
defining his Deity in abstract propositions; these are the vehi- 
cles of his religious faith. The literary collector preserves 
his manuscript in a library — the museum of written ideas. 
Both alike, together with all the innumerable other relics 
deposited along the line of historical culture, from heathen 
idol to philosophical creed, reveal the one impulse, exhibit 
the same, the uniform human need : that of setting up a Self, 
ideal in character, personal in form, as the goal of develop- 
ment and the end of striving. 

To eradicate religion, therefore, would be to mutilate 
personality and deflect the course of development both of 
individual spiritual life and of social progress. The need 
of religion is the same for both. Individuals find in an object, 
a symbol, a creed, the embodiment of the ideal which satis- 
fies their religious needs; and this, just through the public 
or social character of the embodiment and the means of its 
realization, issues in a cult, a church, a religious communion. 
Man cannot have a private religion; men must be religious 
together. They cannot be religious together without a tradi- 
tion, a local home, a more or less elaborate ritual or body of 
procedure. The creed, on the one hand, is the natural 
embodiment of the objective religious content or system of 



106 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

ideas; the cult, on the other hand, is the equally natural 
embodiment of the social processes which unite the individuals 
in loyalty to a spiritual order. 

One may say, of course, that humanity might have devel- 
oped otherwise, might have rid itself of religion, or might 
do so still. Possibly, had humanity itself been different. 
What might have been, is a different question from what has 
been. We can only conjecture what the body and mind 
alike would have been — to take another case — if any one of 
the great animal or mental functions had been lacking or 
had been much altered. The issue would have been different, 
granted there could have been a development at all. So 
here: the process of self-consciousness normally issues in 
social and moral life, and this idealizes itself in religion. 
What development of personality might have been possible, 
had this social bond been absent, who can tell? It is not 
our business to find out. But we can say — as we have said 
just above — that if, in the future, by processes of reflection, 
hedonistic, egoistic, anarchistic, Nitschian or other, religion 
be eliminated from human life, it will nevertheless certainly 
have its sublimated equivalent in some form of renewed mys- 
ticism, in which the outreach toward the ideal will again 
embody itself. The time is full of indications of this. The 
man who scoffs at a creed stands in awe before the mysteries 
of table-turning and spirit-rapping; and the sceptic in the 
matter of miracles, accepts faith cures, telepathic messages 
from the unseen world, second sight and other equally miracu- 
lous violations of the natural order. The religious spirit, 
in short, outlives its recurrent forms of embodiment, and the 
rejection of this religion or that, this ideal or that, is always 
in the interest of some other embodiment, in which the same 
spiritual movement hastens to clothe itself. 

c. Finally, coming back to the sober tasks of science, we 



DARWINISM AND RELIGION 107 

see that religion is an important factor in culture, from every 
point of view. Important vistas are opened up in history, 
in sociology, in education, so soon as we see that there is one 
genetic motive only, one factor at work, in the development 
of the individual and the progress of society; it is only the 
growth of human personality. Such enquiry unifies special 
researches in many fields. The study of religion throws 
light upon politics, upon industry, upon education — upon 
all the departments and interests in which the human spirit 
shows its activities. For the religious motive is a comprehen- 
sive social motive; in religious history, we trace events and 
describe institutions, in which the sociologist detects the bond 
of human brotherhood in its most essential forms. The 
educationist finds in the religious utterances of the child, as 
the anthropologist finds in the religious ceremonies of the 
race, indices to the pages of the volume of civilization. 

In conclusion, I may recall our starting point — recall that 
we started out to describe the value of a certain point of 
view, the genetic, in which the influence of Darwinism shows 
itself in the study of Religion. The results show, both in 
spirit and in letter, the fruitfulness of the evolutionary theory 
in one of the great topics of anthropology and psychology. 
If we should take up, one by one, the more specific factors of 
Darwinism and seek to find them in this field, we should 
again recount what we have already discovered in the chapter 
on the Social Sciences. Religion is handed down by ' social 
heredity' — it illustrates the power of 'variations' in moral 
and mental characters and products — it shows the need of 
inner organization in the form of idealization, to fit a 
group or nation for its competitive life. Religion, by con- 
serving morality, by cultivating the best, the most social, 
self in a people, makes the state more fit. Religion is both a 



108 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

personal satisfaction and a social weapon. To use the terms 
employed above, it has both immediate and instrumental 
Value. 

THE END 



APPENDIX A. 

Darwin's Judgment 

The main consideration which this paper 1 aims to present, that 
of the responsibility of all men, be they great >r be they small, to 
the same standards of social judgment, and to the same philo- 
sophical treatment, is illustrated in the very man to whose genius 
we owe the principle upon which my remarks are based — Charles 
Darwin; and it is singularly appropriate that we should also find 
the history of this very principle, that of variations with the corre- 
lative principle of selection, furnishing a capital illustration of our 
inferences. Darwin was, with the single exception of Aristotle, 
possibly the man with the sanest judgment that the human mind 
has ever brought to the investigation of nature. He represented, 
in an exceedingly adequate way, the progress of scientific method 
up to his day. He was disciplined in all the natural science of his 
predecessors. His judgment was an epitome of the scientific 
insight of the ages which culminated then. The time was ripe 
for such a great constructive thought as his — ripe, that is, as far 
as the accumulation of scientific data was concerned. His judg- 
ment differed then from the judgment of his scientific contempo- 
raries mainly in that it was sounder and safer than theirs. And 
with it Darwin was a great constructive thinker. He had the 
intellectual strength which put the judgment of his time to the 
strain — everybody's but his own. This is seen in the fact that 
Darwin was not the first to speculate in the line of his great dis- 
covery, nor to reach formulas; but with the others, guessing took 
the place of induction. The formula was an uncriticised thought. 
The unwillingness of society to embrace the hypothesis was justi- 

^xtract from an essay on Genius; see the writer's popular work 
Story of the Mhid, Chap. x. 

109 



IIO DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

fied by the same lack of evidence which prevented the thinkers 
themselves from giving it proof. And if no Darwin had appeared, 
the problem of biological development would have been left about 
where it had ' been left by the speculations of the Greek mind . 
Darwin reached his conclusion by what that other great scientific 
genius in England, Newton, described as the essential of discovery, 
'patient thought;' and having reached it he had no alternative but 
to judge it true and pronounce it to the world. 

But the principle of variations with natural selection had the 
reception which shows that good judgment may rise higher than 
the level of its own social origin. Even now the principle of Darwin 
is but a spreading ferment in many spheres of human thought in 
which it is destined to bring the same revolution that it has worked 
in the sciences of organic life. It was not until other men, who 
had both authority with the public and sufficient information to 
follow Darwin's thought, seconded his judgment that his great 
discovery began to have currency in scientific circles. 

A passage in Professor Poulton's Charles Darwin and the Theory 
of Natural Selection (1896, pp. 12 f.) is so fully in accord with 
the position of my text that I allow myself to quote it entire : 

"It is a common error to suppose that the intellectual powers 
which make the poet or historian are essentially different from 
those which make the man of science. Powers of observation, 
however acute, could never make a scientific discoverer; for dis- 
covery requires the creative effort of the imagination. The scien- 
tific man does not stumble upon new facts or conclusions by acci- 
dent; he finds what he looks for. The problem before him is 
essentially similar to that of the historian who tries to create an 
accurate and complete picture of an epoch out of scattered records 
of contemporary impressions more or less true, and none wholly 
true. Fertility of imagination is absolutely essential for that step 
from the less to the more perfectly known, which we call discovery. 

"But fertility of imagination alone is insufficient for the highest 
achievements in poetry, history, or science; for in all these subjects 
the strictest self-criticism and the soundest judgment are necessary 
in order to insure that the results are an advance in the direction 
of the truth. 



APPENDIX A III 

"It is probable then that the secret of Darwin's strength lay in 
the perfect balance between his powers of imagination and those of 
accurate observation, the creative efforts of the one being ever sub- 
jected to the most relentless criticism by the employment of the 
other. 'We shall never know,' I have heard Professor Michael 
Foster say, 'the countless hypotheses which passed through the 
mind of Darwin, and which, however wild and improbable, were 
tested by an appeal to nature, and were then dismissed forever.' 

"Darwin's estimate of his own powers is given with characteristic 
candor and modesty in the concluding paragraph of his Auto- 
biography (Life and Letters, 1887, p. 107): 

" 'Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may 
have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, 
by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of 
these the most important have been — the love of science — un- 
bounded patience in long reflecting over any subject — industry in 
observing and collecting facts — and a fair share of invention as 
well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I 
possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a 
considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important 
points.' " 



APPENDIX B. 

Darwinism and Logic 

In his interesting paper, having the same title as this note, pub- 
lished in the Darwin Number, May, 1909, of this Review 1 , Professor 
J. E. Creighton cites my work, Thought and Things, as representa- 
tive of the Darwinian point of view in logic, and criticises it in 
some detail. I am, of course, gratified that the work is honored in 
this way. I find, however, that Professor Creighton's criticisms 
are not altogether valid, and I will accordingly suggest certain con- 
siderations which in my opinion show this. 

Professor Creighton has no difficulty in proving by quotations 
from my different publications, that I am a Darwinian, and that 
Darwinian conceptions have had frequent application in my work. 
Nor has he greater difficulty in showing that I often take the stand- 
point from which experience is looked upon as an immanent self- 
integrating movement. But he considers these two points of view 
inconsistent with each other: one interprets experience ' biologically' 
— as a relation of organism and mind to environment — the other 
'logically' or ' ideologically' (so Professor Creighton) — as a principle 
of internal organization and movement. The question then is 
this: can both of these points of view be held at once? — or does 
either commit us to a philosophy which excludes the other? 

Evidently the first, the method and view-point of biological sci- 
ence, must be upheld if we are to have a theory of mental develop- 
ment and evolution at all. Each mind grows up in a body, and 
both mind and body are in environments. Experience requires 
things and situations; its own movement establishes and utilizes 
what we call the 'trans-subjective reference.' Is the recognition of 

1 From the Psychological Review, November 1909. 
112 



APPENDIX B 113 

this consistent with a theory which interprets experience as a pro- 
gressive organization having its own ' logic' ? 

Professor Creighton thinks that the latter point of view commits 
one to a ' teleology' which — though somewhat vague to me — seems 
to require the denial of the validity of a Darwinian conception of 
adaptation, considered as a necessary factor in the development of 
experience. 1 

Proceeding then to the criticism of my views, made by Professor 
Creighton, I may say that it is in my last work alone, the ' Genetic 
Logic,' that I have taken exclusively the point of view of experience. 
It should not be compared with the other more biological books and 
papers except as this difference is recognized. 2 

In the Genetic Logic the attempt is made to trace out the actual 
movement of experience from mode to mode, all of these modes 
being equally 'psychic' The result is reached that a dualism of 
controls, due to segregation of contents, is come upon in experience 
itself. This dualism is not injected by our interpretation, nor read 
in from an external point of view: it is found by and in the process. 
The impoitant point is that by its own immanental movement into 
the logical mode, experience establishes just the dualism that science 
adopts and employs. In the discussion of the relation of the ' psy- 
chic' and 'objective' points of view {Thought and Things, I, chap. 

1 He uses the expression ' genetic or teleological' as if these two 
terms were synonymous (loc. cit., p. 185). 

2 It is a conscious and deliberate difference, and cannot be looked 
upon as a contradiction unless it can be shown that one of the points 
of view is rendered invalid when one takes the other. In the Social 
Interpretations, both methods are used on occasion, to supplement 
and confirm each other, the biological, however, having a very sub- 
ordinate place. In the Genetic Logic, the standpoint of experience, 
the 'psychic' point of view, is consistently maintained. It is 
erroneous, therefore, to say (Creighton, p. 180), "Professor Bald- 
win's account professes to show, not how the mind becomes con- 
scious of its own logical nature, but how that logical nature is 
engendered in it through the motor adjustments of the organism to 
material conditions." How the mind becomes [grows to be] con- 
scious of its logical nature [or processes] is just what the Genetic 
Logic does profess to show. 



114 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

ii, §§ 3, 4), I show that the latter is simply the explicit outcome of 
the dualism normally established when the mode of judgment or 
reflection is reached. 1 The scientific is simply the logical point of 
view made use of as deliberate method. It involves the self 
thinking of objects which are judged about or observed — objects 
known to it as 'things.' This very dualism is the presupposition 
of the logical as such; and scientific method — whether its results 
issue in Darwinism, Lamarckism, vitalism, mechanism, teleology 
or any other type of theory — is thinking, no more and no less than 
thinking. In the more refined operations of thought upon ideas, 
the ideas are symbols of the things into which they are at any time 
convertible. The sciences of observation go directly to the things, 
to perceptions and sensations; but in both cases the control of the 
context, whether it be one of ideas or of things, is the same — that 
of a sphere taken by the process to be foreign to itself. 

So far then from finding a contradiction between the point of 
view of evolution — dualistic as it is — and that of a psychic account 
of the genesis of logical process, I find that the latter issues in 
and justifies the former. Any adequate tracing out of the progres- 
sion of knowledge, within experience itself, shows it to issue in a 
system of judgments in which the two controls — things as 'outer' and 
the self as 'inner' — are found confronting each other. Reflection 
sublimates this dualism by erecting a mediating context of ideas; 
but all validities in the context and all truthful references beyond it, 
rest upon the fact that this mediation is dual. 

What then I would insist upon is the radically unreal character of 
the supposed contradiction. The observation, experimentation, 
analysis, etc., of biological science, a; of all science, are processes 
proper and vital to the logical mode of experience. Science is 
logical process proceeding under its normal and necessary presup- 
positions. In recognizing the externality of things — the environ- 

1 Instead of allowing Professor Creighton's interpretation to the 
effect that the "inner and outer controls' are in my hands 'a 
translation into other terms of the organism and environment,' I 
hold that the relation of organism and environment is a logical 
transformation of the dualism of inner outer and controls. 



APPENDIX B 115 

ment — it is only following the essential movement of psychic process, 
which although presupposing exernality, still finds it to be a mean- 
ing of contrast with the internality of the inner control, of the self. 
Accordingly, one may freely use the biological method and point 
of view (as I have done in the paper on 'selective thinking' which 
Professor Creighton considers very reprehensible in this respect) ; 
for this procedure only recognizes as valid, for purposes of delib- 
erate observation, the dualism that logical experience itself estab- 
lishes for all the processes of thought. 1 

Of course, the further question will be asked: Is one's final philo- 
sophical view then to be dualistic? — is logical experience to be 
taken at its word and as the final word ? Professor Creighton, as 
just cited, says that I recognize only two alternatives, mechanism and 
apriorism; and he suggests the third, teleology. But my recogni- 
tion of these two modes of interpretation is merely to cite them as 
horns of a dilemma both of which are to be avoided. 2 The teleo- 
logical interpretation, also, taken in its ordinary sense — barring 
its excessive ambiguity — is also to be questioned, and for much the 
same reasons. These reasons I may now briefly state. 3 

1. We are only remaining true to the standpoint of experience 
itself in seeking to trace out the rise and development of such cate- 
gories as mechanism and teleology. They arise as meanings attach- 
ing to different sorts of experience; and by them objects and situa- 
tions are consistently and profitably apprehended and treated. 
Some experiences have a certain regularity and lawfulness: these, 

1 It is clear then that the following statement of my view is not 
correct (Creighton, p. 184), "here as elsewhere the alternative for 
Professor Baldwin is between deriving logical principles mechani- 
cally and finding them existing a priori' ' (italics his) . 

2 I do not accept the term ' mechanism' as applicable to a genetic 
movement proper; it denotes only one of the possible naturalistic 
interpretations of this movement. My own interpretation, em- 
bodied in the theory of 'genetic modes,' combats the mechanical 
view. 

3 The following has reference also to Professor Creighton's paper 
read at Baltimore, to which I listened. It may suggest to him some 
revision of that paper, since this discussion is new. 



Il6 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

thus apprehended, come to mean the mechanical. In the case of 
other experiences, developing conation shapes the contents towards 
personal ends : these, so apprehended, mean the teleological. In the 
logical mode, th se two meanings become general ways of assimila- 
ting events of one type or the other. Each is valid for its purpose, 
and each is restricted in its use: one means for experience just the 
dominance of external, the other that of internal control. 

Now to use either of these as an exclusive or universal mode of 
interpretation is to abolish the other in its own province, and so to 
falsify our report of the progression of experience in which they 
have together arisen. The mechanical would not be mechanical 
but for the possession of those characters which show it to be bare 
of teleological meaning; it represents knowledge formed under a 
control which evidences itself as foreign. The teleological, on the 
other hand, would not be teleological but for its character as embody- 
ing the agent's control exercised in the pursuit of personal ends. 
Teleological processes as such are for consciousness not mechanical, 
and mechanical are not teleological. 

I have contrasted the results of these two modes of process by 
using the two expressions 'knowledge through (external) control' — 
issuing in sequences which are mechanical in their meaning; and 
'(internal) control through knowledge' — issuing in sequences 
with which personal interest and conation are identified (Thought 
and Things, II, chap. xiv). Unless the ideologists can show, 
from the movement of further experience, that there is positive 
justification for the step, 1 they may not employ as a universal sol- 
vent the partial meaning which they favor. 

2 . But even if we allow the category of teleology to apply univer- 

1 Actually the progress of experience, both personal and racial, 
is away from animistic and anthropomorphic teleological interpre- 
tations of nature. Science has had gradually to achieve its birth- 
right, only gradually establishing a conception of natural law which 
operates without 'teleological' interference. Just here is, in fact, 
in my opinion, the great service rendered by Darwinism to philo- 
sophical thought : it once for all established a natural law of adapta- 
tion. 



APPENDIX B 117 

sally, it too issues in a characteristic dualism from which there is 
no logical escape. Ends are attained through the mediation of 
ideas or facts. Facts and ideas are not ends: 'what a man hath 
why doth he yet hope for ?' — it is a further realization, beyond the 
idea or fact, that he hopes for. A conscious end is always medi- 
tated — furthered or hindered — by some fact or idea. To any tele- 
ology which involves genuine purpose, the dualism of 'fact-idea 
and end' — taking the form of ' means and end' or of ' hindrance to 
end' — is as stubborn as that of 'thinker and thing' in the domain of 
cognition. 

To escape this difficulty, the intellectual idealist goes over to a 
teleology which does not involve purpose in any concrete or actual 
sense, while he still retains vaguely the principle of "means and ends.' 
But what 'means and ends' can mean apart from an agent who 
adopts the means (facts or ideas) to attain the ends (results), it is 
difficult to see. What is really present is the actual flow of genetic 
process, with its great dualisms of knowledge and purpose. If we 
take this process for what it is, it discovers itself to experience in 
the two modes of organization called ideological or mechanical 
according as the situations of actual life present contents of one 
sort or the other. 1 

1 In my discussion of ' genetic series' as such (the theory of ' Gen- 
etic Modes,' Development and Evolution, chap, xix, described by 
Professor Creighton as a sort of invalid compromise), I have pointed 
out that such series present both aspects, the quantitative or 
mechanical and the qualitative or in the large sense 'worthful:' they 
show a form of sequence or conditioning which is not exhausted by 
either interpretation taken alone. Professor Creighton is, I think, 
in error in saying (p. 182) about this theory that 'the something 
new' that it recognizes as arising in a genetic series ' simply comes 
into the series as a miracle.' I reply: it is not a miracle except to 
one who has already adopted a quantitative or mechanical concep- 
tion of all natural change. Such a cast-iron quantitative concep- 
tion apart — why should not nature produce novelties? James and 
Bergson, as well as the present writer, have recently protested 
against the arid 'energistic' conception of 'cause and effect.' For 
my part, I am not willing to prejudice the case by using the terms of 
mechanics for such sequences; I have therefore employed the term 



Il8 DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES 

If this actual genetic movement, so apprehended in experience — 
the progressive integration of contents, as on occasion both 'factual' 
and 'end-fulfilling' for the agent — is what Professor Creighton 
means by 'teleology', then I am with him. I prefer that term to 
'mechanism,' if one is to use but one term for the entire movement. 
But my aim is to go further constructively, and to discover what the 
issue is when the movement does not stop with the mediation by 
ideas in either of these two ways — with mediation as true for knowl- 
edge, and as good for purpose — but when it goes on to apprehend the 
contents in a further mode of direct contemplation. The movement 
then goes beyond the objectification of the contents in judgment of 
fact and value; and reaches a higher hyper-logical immediacy. 1 My 
present purpose is accomplished, however, in showing how it is 
possible to turn the edge of Professor Creighton's criticism. I 
accept both the terms of the supposed contradiction. I hold that 
when legitimately employed, mechanism and teleology are 
naturalistic or empirical categories, both valid, but both restricted, 
in their proper use, and both superseded in a hyper-logical mode of 
experience. 

' progression' .... Further, I do not admit Professor Creighton's 
claim that a genetic series, as I describe it in my theory of 'genetic 
modes,' 'exhibits no identity throughout the different stages of the 
process.' On the contrary, the varying degrees of identity which 
it actually has for consciousness serve as motive to the transforma- 
tions of the ' sameness' meaning, as traced in my book in great detail, 
up to the logical judgment of identity (vol. i, chap, viii, §3, and 
chap, ix, §5; vol. ii, chap. x). 

1 To the development of this point much of the third volume of 
the Genetic Logic is to be devoted. In an article entitled ' Knowledge 
and Imagination,' Psychological Review, May, 1908, I have stated in 
outline the characters in virtue of which aesthetic experience appears 
to discharge this office. In the same volume {Thought and Things, 
iii) the genetic processes are also discussed by which experiences 
of truth and utility respectively come to be reflected in the 'intuition' 
and 'practical reason' of the individual. 



Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic: 

A Study of the Development and Meaning of Thought. 
By JAMES MARK BALDWIN, LL.D., etc. 

Lately Professor in Princeton and Johns Hopkins Universities. 

Vol. I. Functional Logic, or Genetic Theory of Knowledge 

$2.75 net 

Prof. J. E. Russell in Journ. of Philos. — " I record my fullest appreciation of a 
notable book, one that cannot [fail to add to the author's already splendid reputa- 
tion, and one which will enlarge not a little our knowledge in a great field of science." 
The time has come for the reconstruction of the entire discipline of 
logic. A reconstruction of logic on the basis of a genetic explanation of our actual 
knowledge seems to be manifest destiny in the light of Professor Baldwin's present 
work." 

The Nation. — "This is a most earnest, profound, laborious systematic analysis 
of cognition, such as cannot fail to be of continual utility to students of psychology. 
It appears to be a signal setting forth of science — what the Germans would call an 
'epoch-making' book. When one has to build a house, a definite plan is drawn, 
in which all the conditions are duly considered — and this plan becomes the focus of 
study. Just such a preliminary project it is with which Professor Baldwin has now 
enriched the psychology of cognition. The vocabulary of well-considered new terms 
is in itself a precious gift to psychological investigation. For with each of these new 
terms there goes a valuable new conception. The publication must serve as a 
precious landmark in future investigation, in that it lays down for the first time a 
definite project of structure of the theory of cognition in great detail." 

Prof. Btjchner, in a re'sume' of "Psychological Progress in 1906." — "The genetic 
method has been wielding an influence shaking up the old distinctions; but there has 
not been such a traversing of the whole psychological field solely by its intellectual 
right and its scientific authority as that made by Baldwin's Thought and Things. 
It promises a complete reconstruction of psychology and also of the cognate phil- 
osophical diciplines of logic and epistemology, leaving the time-honored distinctions 
far[behind. The achievement can be interpreted as an age-movement, and be closely 
related to the current intellectual need which has been finding widespread satisfac- 
tion in pragmatism." 

Prof. Creighton, in the Philosophical Review. — ' ' Worked out with great thorough- 
ness of detail and a comprehensive grasp of guiding principles — one cannot fail to 
recognize the importance of the problem and the real value of his results. One 
must heartily acknowledge the importance of Prof. Baldwin's contribution in a 
comparatively new field." 

Prof. A. W. Moore, in the Psychological Bulletin. — " This is the most comprehen- 
sive attempt in logic yet made in America. The fact that such a program is offered 
and the general standpoint and method of treatment are further evidence that phil- 
osophy in America is rapidly passing from the absorbing, translating, albeit necessary 
period of German apprenticeship into a free creative adulthood." 

Nature. — "The first installment of what promises to be an important inquiry into 
the actual movement of the function of knowledge. Prof. Baldwin's account of the 
process by which cognition is built up is so coherent that it is impossible to give 
more than a fraction of its substance. But one finds that the writer has always 
something true and important to say." 



Vol. II. Experimental Logic, or Genetic Theory of Thought 

$2.75 net 

Edinburgh Scotsman. — "Three volumes are to go to the full making of the valuable 
and elaborate treatise upon logic, of which this is the second. It expounds experi- 
mental logic, explains how the process of thinking goes on, and examines the sanc- 
tions of logical validity and the dualisms and limitations of thought. The book is 
full of matter, and this volume well maintains the promise of its predecessor that the 
complete treatise will rank as one of the most important among recent contribu- 
tions to the literature of philosophy." 

Athenaeum. — "The time has not yet come to attempt an estimate of the general 
worth of this ambitious effort to construct a systematic logic on genetic lines. The 
third volume is not written. Meanwhile we congratulate Prof. Baldwin — a thinker 
of great vigor and ability — on having accomplished another lap in his long course. 
It is very interesting to observe how America having served its philosophical appren- 
ticeship is now devoting its matured powers to every branch of philosophy in turn. 
Logic in particular has recently been taken in hand. The present volume belongs 
to the same movement. It displays a predominant interest in genesis, and con- 
siders thinking and thought in live and organic relation to the mental economy as 
a whole. On the other hand, it is a direct challenge and counterblast to the logic 
emanating from Chicago. But both parties would agree to condemn as obsolete 
and barren much that still passes for logic in certain quarters." 

Prof. W. H. Sheldon, in the Psychological Bulletin. — "This second volume, while 
lacking nothing in organic unity, contains a wealth of topics of which a review can 
give no adequate idea. Prof. Baldwin has shed new light upon many old logical 
problems and (what is rare enough in logical treatises) has really contributed to 
our knowledge in several respects. These contributions, together with a broad- 
mindedness which can combine opposite extremes of theory, are, in our view, the 
chief merits of the work. There is no recent book in English which has covered the 
field so fully, in so empirical a spirit, yet with such philosophical and logical power 
of interpretation. The 'pragmatic' works were constructive, and empirical, yet 
certainly, without taking in as many facts or recognizing as many human needs and 
interests. The author is able to find a place for the practical, theoretic, esthetic, 
social, even 'logistic' motives that enter into human thought to justify each and to 
restrain each to its proper limits It is not easy to say which of the author's special 
views seem to us most important: on the whole, however, we think the dualism of 
content and control is probably the most fertile contribution. We agree that every 
treatment of either the logic or the psychology of cognition should proceed along 
these lines. Prof. Baldwin has surveyed and mapped a region which should now be 
settled by the logician." s 

Prof. Creighton, in "Darwin and Logic. — "What seems to me especially signifi- 
cant in Mr. Baldwin's work is the account of the stages and means through which the 
individual mind develops a fully conscious logical experience. It is in part the same 
undertaking that Hegel left so incomplete. The progress of biology and psychology 
has made it possible for Prof. Baldwin to present a concrete working out of this 
problem which is an immense advance on anything that previously existed." 

Dr. K. Schalk, in the Rivista di filosofia. — ' ' Every one must join in admiration of 
this [work] which is full of new researches, original thoughts, and serious work, 
especially when it is compared with the leanness of most logical treatises. One of 
its merits is that it clears up many of the points at issue between Pragmatism and 
the old Philosophy." 

London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. New York: The MacMillan Co. 



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